Loire Valley, 1895. When seventeen-year-old Sara Thibault’s father is killed in a mudslide, her mother sells their vineyard to a rival family whose eldest son marries Sara’s sister, Lydia. But a violent tragedy compels Sara and her sister to flee to New York, forcing Sara to put aside her dream to follow in her father’s footsteps as a master winemaker. Meanwhile, Philippe Lemieux has arrived in California with the ambition of owning the largest vineyard in Napa by 1900. When he receives word of his brother’s death in France, he resolves to bring the killer to justice. Sara has travelled to California in hopes of making her own way in the winemaking world. When she encounters Philippe in a Napa vineyard, they are instantly drawn to one another, but Sara knows he is the one man who could return her family’s vineyard to her, or send her straight to the guillotine. This riveting tale of betrayal, retribution, love, and redemption, Kristen Harnisch’s debut novel immerses readers in the rich vineyard culture of both the Old and New Worlds, the burgeoning cities of late nineteenth-century America and a spirited heroine’s fight to determine her destiny.

My rating: 4.75 stars out of a scale of 5

My review: This book will count for the challenge I am participating in for April, the #ReadingMyLibrary reading challenge. I saw this book at the Bristol Library and thought it might be interesting. I have found over the past few years that I have a fascination with wine, I have taken a number classes to learn more about the different kinds of grapes and the winemaking process. So I picked this book up due to it  being about wine. It turned out to be just fantastic. It was very well-paced, I can honestly day I wasn’t bored once. It had everything you could like in a novel; murder, love, family, death, new birth. This book is rumored to be the first in a series about winemaking throughout the last century, and I honestly just can not wait for this author to publish her next novel. This book was so good, I was hooked on the story pretty much from the beginning and I couldn’t let go. The characters came alive for me and I would get so engrossed in the story that I would have trouble dragging my mind back to reality. The descriptions of the rolling hillsides of Napa as well as the description of the Saint Martin vineyard in France (Loire Valley) was just beautiful. Very good novel.