The Year of What If

An enlightened, feel-good novel about a middle-aged woman who goes on a quest to revisit her past in order map out her future. 

Just when it appears as though 42-year-old Carla Carter--a divorced dating expert and entrepreneur--is about to start a glorious new chapter in her life, a visit to a psychic upends her hoped for ‘happy ending’ in Phaedra Patrick’s enlightened, feel-good new novel, The Year of What If. 

Carla is emerging from a sordid past. A supposed curse was said to be placed upon her family many years before that has familial folks believing that all females in the bloodline will never find true and lasting love. Carla has always attributed the hex to her first, regrettable (and forgettable) first marriage. 

After she establishes Logical Love, a dating app, and the algorithm pairs her up with Tom, a game inventor who later becomes her fiancé, it would appear as though Carla is on the road to a fresh, new start…and she’ll finally be the one to break the dreaded spell. 

Her superstitious family, however, intervenes and forces Carla to visit a psychic who urges that Tom isn’t the man she should marry. Rather, she believes a man Carla met twenty years before, during Carla’s ‘gap-year’ after college graduation, is really the love of her life. 

Upon the urging of the psychic and her family, Carla cannot rest. She sets off on a quest--not telling Tom about the nature of her travels--through Europe in search of looking up men who might’ve crossed her path during that oh-so-innocent time in her life. 

With signature insight and tender humor, Patrick (The Little Italian Hotel, The Messy Lives of Book People) once again takes readers on an exciting, adventurous literary journey where one woman’s search for a former flame actually leads her down a path to self-discovery.

The Year of What If: A Novel by Phaedra Patrick

Park Row Books/HarperCollins, $17.99 paperback, 978-0778310891, 336 pages

Publishing Date: June 25, 2024

To order this book on INDIEBOUND/Bookshop.Org, link HERE 

The Star-Crossed Sisters of Tuscany

A delightful romantic story centered on three single women of an Italian family who set off to Italy to break a 200-year-old curse. 

Long-simmering resentments and buried secrets permeate The Star-Crossed Sisters of Tuscany, a romantic, beautifully rendered, sweepingly complex family saga.

 

Emilia Antonelli, 29, of Bensonhurst in Brooklyn, is a second-generation Italian American. She lives a simple, manageable life, resigned to remaining single forever, working in the family delicatessen and bakery, while also secretly pursuing a "little writing hobby." Emilia lives under the shadow of a family curse that goes back 200 years: all second-born daughters are cursed to live a life without love. After their mother died, Emilia and her older sister, Daria, were raised by their mild-mannered father and the domineering Nonna Rosa, their mother's mother and the surly, infinitely controlling backbone of the family. Nonna Rosa favors Daria, the first-born granddaughter, and belittles Emilia.

 

Emilia's life takes a drastic turn when she receives a letter from Paolina Fontana, her long-lost great-aunt, who lives in Philadelphia. "Aunt Poppy" is flamboyant, artsy and colorful. She is Nonna Rosa's younger sister, shunned by the family decades earlier. But Poppy writes to Emilia and Luciana, another second-born cousin, offering to treat them both to an all-expenses-paid trip to Italy to celebrate Poppy's 80th birthday. At the cathedral in the town of Ravello, Poppy intends to reunite with her one true love, with the intention of also breaking the family curse.

What ensues is an exciting excursion through Italy--its culture and fineries; romance and history--for the three women. Aunt Poppy proves warm, charming and wise. Lori Nelson Spielman (Sweet Forgiveness) provides first-rate storytelling and nuanced, clearly defined characters that will captivate readers right up to the surprising finale.

The Star-Crossed Sistersof Tuscany by Lori Nelson Spielman

Berkley-Penguin, $16.00 Paperback, 9781984803160, 400 pages

Publication Date: November 27, 2020

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (November 27, 2020), link HERE

 

To read the longer form of this review as published on Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade (October 23, 2020), link HERE

Mr. Gandy's Grand Tour

A washed-up, middle-aged British man sets off on a tour of Europe that changes him in unexpected, profound ways.

When Timothy Gandy's job as a graphic designer is made redundant, the 55-year-old Brit discovers that he's too old to find a new job and too young to retire. Taking stock, he realizes he's invisible in the shadow of his domineering wife--a woman involved with social and philanthropic causes, and to whom he's been married for 40 years. And he doesn't always see eye-to-eye with his adult children. Son Oliver is a successful barrister. He and his wife are highfalutin, materialistic intellectuals. Middle daughter Alice is single, a distant and reclusive librarian. However, good-natured Rosie, a schoolteacher, shares a bond with her father. She understands him. She and her conservationist, naturalist beau struggle to make ends meet, while happily raising their daughter together. 

The sting of unemployment followed by a shattering personal loss convinces Timothy to follow his long-repressed yearnings for travel. Despite staunch objections from his family--all except Rosie--he finally asserts himself. He sets off on a grand tour of Europe modeled in the style of those taken by young men of means in the late 18th century. Timothy leaves his Chichester, England, home and begins an exciting journey that takes him through France and Italy, where he makes unexpected new friends that change him and his outlook on life. 

Noted gardening guru Alan Titchmarsh (Bring Me Home) plants seeds of hope in another wholesome, richly entertaining story. Readers will be eager to accompany his sensitive, winning protagonist through an itinerary of many adventures.

Mr. Gandy's Grand Tour by Alan Titchmarsh

Hodder & Stoughton, $26.99 Hardcover,  9780340953075, 320  pages

Publication Date: April 24, 2018

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (May 22, 2018), link HERE.