A Potpourri of Opinions

  Only the Beautiful  Susan Meissner Publication date: April 18, 2023 by Berkley  Genre: Historical Fiction Rating: 5 🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷 Summary: A heartrending story about a young mother’s fight to keep her daughter, and the winds of fortune that tear them apart by the New York Times bestselling author of The Nature of Fragile Things and The Last Year of the War. California, 1938—When she loses her parents in an accident, sixteen-year-old Rosanne is taken in by the owners of the vineyard where she has lived her whole life as the vinedresser’s daughter. She moves into Celine and Truman Calvert’s spacious house with a secret however—Rosie sees colors when she hears sound. She promised her mother she’d never reveal her little-understood ability to anyone, but the weight of her isolation and grief prove too much for her. Driven by her loneliness she not only breaks the vow to her mother, but in a desperate moment lets down her guard and ends up pregnant. Banished by the Calverts, Ro...

  Coronation Year Jennifer Robson Publication Date: April 4, 2023 by William Morrow Paperbacks Genre: Historical Fiction Rating: 5 🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷 Summary: The USA Today bestselling author of The Gown returns with another enthralling and royal-adjacent historical novel—as the lives of three very different residents of London’s historic Blue Lion hotel converge in a potentially explosive climax on the day of Queen Elizabeth’s Coronation. It is Coronation Year, 1953, and a new queen is about to be crowned. The people of London are in a mood to celebrate, none more so than the residents of the Blue Lion hotel. Edie Howard, owner and operator of the floundering Blue Lion, has found the miracle she needs: on Coronation Day, Queen Elizabeth in her gold coach will pass by the hotel’s front door, allowing Edie to charge a fortune for rooms and, barring disaster, save her beloved home from financial ruin. Edie’s luck might just be turning, all thanks to a young queen about her own age. Stella Do...

  The Courtesan's Daughter Susanne Dunlap Publication date: April 25, 2023 by Atmosphere Press Genre: Historical Fiction Rating: 3 🍷🍷🍷 Summary: What happens when a daughter’s dream and a mother’s sordid past collide? 1910 New York. Seventeen-year-old Sylvie and her French-immigrant mother Justine eke out a living doing piecework in a tenement on the Lower East Side, while Sylvie attends school so that she can escape their life of poverty by becoming a teacher. At least, that’s what her mother believes should happen. Sylvie, though, has a different dream. She wants to be a star in the new moving pictures, just like the beautiful Vitagraph Girl. When she meets a dangerously handsome Italian boy at church one Sunday and he encourages her ambitions, she begins secretly taking steps toward the career she knows her mother won’t approve of. But Sylvie isn’t the only one with secrets. Justine has kept her sordid past from Sylvie ever since they came to New York fifteen years before, sti...

  The One Who Fell Whitecliff Bay Mystery #1 Kerry Wilkinson Pub date: April 17, 2023 by Bookouture Genre: Cozy Mystery Rating: 4 👢👢👢👢 Summary: In the seaside town of Whitecliff, everyone looks out for each other. Everyone knows your name. And everyone knows your secrets... Moonlight falls on the figure of the girl standing on the red-tiled roof. Her white dress and blonde hair flutter in the freezing night wind. And suddenly - she is gone.  Volunteering at the local nursing home is Millie Westlake 's one escape from the rumours that swirl around Whitecliff about her past. But speaking with elderly resident, Ingrid, as they play board games, Millie gets chills at her strange story about a young girl being pushed from a roof, somewhere across the valley... Everybody thinks Ingrid is confused but Millie knows how it feels to not be believed. Her parents died a year ago, and the residents of Whitecliff - such a quiet place, other than crashing waves and cawing seagulls -...