Publisher: Simon and Schuster

#BookReview A Death at the Party by Amy Stuart @AmyfStuart @SimonSchusterCA #ADeathattheParty #AmyStuart #SimonSchusterCA

#BookReview A Death at the Party by Amy Stuart @AmyfStuart @SimonSchusterCA #ADeathattheParty #AmyStuart #SimonSchusterCA Title: A Death at the Party

Author: Amy Stuart

Published by: Simon and Schuster on Mar. 7, 2023

Genres: Mystery/Thriller

Pages: 304

Format: ARC, Paperback

Source: Simon & Schuster Canada

Book Rating: 8.5/10

In this tense, spellbinding thriller set over the course of a single day, a woman prepares for a party that goes dreadfully wrong—for fans of Ashley Audrain and Lisa Jewell.

Nadine Walsh’s summer garden party is in full swing. The neighbors all have cocktails, the catered food is exquisite—everything’s going according to plan.

But Nadine—devoted wife, loving mother, and doting daughter—finds herself standing over a dead body in her basement while her guests clink glasses upstairs. What happened? How did it come to this?

Rewind to that morning, when Nadine is in her kitchen, making last-minute preparations before she welcomes more than a hundred guests to her home to celebrate her mother’s birthday. But her husband is of little help to her, her two grown children are consumed with their own concerns, and her mother—only her mother knows that today isn’t just a birthday party. It marks another anniversary as well.

Still, Nadine will focus just on tonight. Everyone deserves a celebration after the year they’ve had. A chance for fun. A chance to forget. But it’s hard to forget when Nadine’s head is swirling with secrets, haunting memories, and concerns about what might happen when her guests unite.


Review:

Simmering, sinister, and seductive!

A Death at the Party is a character-driven, domestic thriller that takes you into the life of Nadine Walsh, a mother of two who, after ending the night of her mother’s sixtieth birthday party and the thirtieth anniversary of her aunt’s tragic death standing over the body of a dead man, takes us back to the start of the day and into all the deception, infidelities, suspicions, and deviant behaviours that led her there.

The prose is intricate and intense. The characters are unreliable, secretive, and consumed. And the plot unfolds and unravels briskly into a murky tale full of twists, turns, surprises, familial drama, manipulation, resentments, scandal, wickedness, depravity, vengeance, and murder.

Overall, A Death at the Party is a tight, devious, relentless tale by Stuart that delves into the complex bonds that exist between friends and family members and reminds us that behind all those happy, smiling faces often lies an abundance of destructive lies and devastating secrets.

 

This book is available now.

Pick up a copy from your favourite retailer or from one of the following links.

         

 

 

Thank you to Simon & Schuster Canada for gifting me a copy in exchange for an honest review.

 

About Amy Stuart

Amy Stuart is the #1 bestselling author of three novels: Still Mine, Still Water, and Still Here. Shortlisted for the Arthur Ellis Best First Novel Award and winner of the 2011 Writers’ Union of Canada Short Prose Competition, Amy is the founder of Writerscape, an online community for hopeful and emerging writers. Amy lives in Toronto with her husband and their three sons.

Photograph by Joey Stuart.

#BookReview An Italian Girl in Brooklyn by Santa Montefiore @SantaMontefiore @SimonSchusterCA #AnItalianGirlinBrooklyn #SantaMontefiore

#BookReview An Italian Girl in Brooklyn by Santa Montefiore @SantaMontefiore @SimonSchusterCA #AnItalianGirlinBrooklyn #SantaMontefiore Title: An Italian Girl in Brooklyn

Author: Santa Montefiore

Published by: Simon and Schuster on Nov. 8, 2022

Genres: Historical Fiction

Pages: 384

Format: Paperback

Source: Simon & Schuster Canada

Book Rating: 9/10

Dark secrets and hidden sorrows abound in Santa Montefiore’s spellbinding new novel set in war-torn Italy and the streets of New York.

‘Nobody does epic romance like Santa Montefiore’ JOJO MOYES
 
New York, 1979
 
It is Thanksgiving and Evelina has her close family and beloved friends gathered around, her heart weighted with gratitude for what she has and regret for what she has given up. She has lived in America for over thirty years, but she is still Italian in her soul. 
 
Northern Italy, 1934
 
Evelina leads a sheltered life with her parents and siblings in a villa of fading grandeur. When her elder sister Benedetta marries a banker, to suit her father’s wishes rather than her own, Evelina swears that she will never marry out of duty. She knows nothing of romantic love, but when she meets Ezra, son of the local dressmaker, her heart recognises it like an old friend. 
 
Evelina wants these carefree days to last forever. She wants to bask in sunshine, beauty and love and pay no heed to the grey clouds gathering on the horizon. But nothing lasts forever.  The shadows of war are darkening over Europe and precious lives are under threat…


Review:

Thoughtful, moving, and immersive!

An Italian Girl in Brooklyn is a poignant, tender tale set in Northern Italy during 1934, as well as New York in 1979, that takes you into the lives of Evelina Pierangelini and Ezra Zanotti, two young lovers from different backgrounds and religions whose lives are unimaginably torn apart and changed forever when their homeland adopts and enforces Germany’s antisemitic regulations during WWII.

The prose is eloquent and expressive. The characters are brave, selfless, and resilient. And the plot is an exceptionally touching tale about life, loss, family, secrets, separation, desperation, forbidden love, tragedy, friendship, and the consequences, repercussions, and horrors of war.

Overall, An Italian Girl in Brooklyn is a beautifully written, sweeping saga by Montefiore that tugs at the heartstrings, makes you think of all those what-ifs, and ultimately reminds you that life is complicated, things often happen for a reason, and love is powerful and everlasting.

 

This novel is available now.

Pick up a copy from your favourite retailer or from one of the following links.

         

 

 

Thank you to Simon & Schuster Canada for gifting me a copy in exchange for an honest review.

 

About Santa Montefiore

Santa Montefiore’s books have been translated into twenty languages and have sold more than four million copies in England and Europe. She is married to writer Simon Sebag Montefiore. They live with their two children, Lily and Sasha, in London.

Photograph by Santa Montefiore

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