Sunflower Publishing Book Reviews

    An Italian Island Secret By Victoria Springfield     SUMMARY: Escape to a beautiful Italian island with this wonderfully romantic story, threaded with secrets and intrigue. It’s time to return to Ischia.  Alessia knows her grandmother grew up on the beautiful Italian island off the coast of Naples. But Ornella seldom talks about her life there – or why she never went back. So Alessia is amazed when Ornella reveals that, in the months before she left Ischia, she had worked on the set of a famous 1950s movie filmed on the island. Is there a link between the film set and the tragic death of Ornella’s teenage sister? Ornella has kept her past – and the heart-wrenching promise she made – a secret for over sixty years. She has tried not to think about the love she gave up. But now, perhaps the truth should finally be revealed...Travelling to Ischia together, Alessia falls in love with the utterly captivating island. Meeting handsome journalist Robert...

    The Last Letter from Sicily by Lindsay Marie Morris SUMMARY: ‘My dearest Gaetano, if this letter reaches you, know that my heart remains under the Sicilian stars where we made our promise...’ Sicily, 1939. Seventeen-year-old Concetta has just received life-changing news: her family is leaving their sun-drenched Sicilian village and moving to America. Desperate to stay with her secret love Gaetano—a fisherman’s son her father would never accept—Concetta spends one last night with him beneath a blanket of stars. There, among the citrus-scented air and cricket song, he hands her a leaving gift: a fountain pen, with a promise to keep their love alive through letters – and return to each other one day. In America, Concetta refuses to let go of her dream of returning to Sicily, even as she struggles to navigate a strange new world of factory work and prejudice. Her letters to Gaetano become her lifeline, each one carrying fragments of her heart across ...

    Broken Madonna    By Anna Lucia   SUMMARY: Elena Ferrante meets Bernadette of Lourdes in a story of love, loss and belonging, spanning post-WW2 Italy through to 90’s England   Italy 1949 At an orphanage in the poverty-stricken Apennine Mountains, 15-year-old Adelina has only one friend - enigmatic, fragile Elisabetta, 11. When Elisabetta claims to see the Madonna by the river, Adelina has doubts. But after Elisabetta appears to heal a traumatised young soldier, Giulio, who starts to walk again without his stick, crowds flock to witness the mystery of Elisabetta’s miracles. Adelina can no longer contain her misgivings and seeks out the scheming priest, Padre Bosco. The secrets of the past begin to unravel, and Adelina, Elisabetta and Giulio each have to confront who or what to believe. Soon they face a terrible reckoning which will cause deep ripples in all their lives, reaching across the years to 1990s England.   MY REVIE...

  Love at First Sight By Jessica Gilmore SUMMARY She's in love. Just with the wrong man . . . Nora is done with dating, but still dreams of finding the one. So when a handsome stranger comes to her rescue one night and vanishes leaving only a business card, it's like a scene out of a romcom . . . It doesn't take long for the two to 'bump' into each other again, and Nora falls for the perfect-on-paper Gabe. Only a few weeks later, he invites her to Sicily, and she cannot believe her luck! Until Gabe is forced away for work, leaving her alone with his big and warm family in gorgeous Sicily who welcome her with open arms. Everyone but Luca, his older and distrustful brother, who is always around. Soon Nora finds herself on the holiday of a lifetime . . . just with the WRONG brother.   MY REVIEW: When I first started reading the book, Love at First Sight, I thought it would be a typical ‘rom-com or ‘beach read’  - a book you can take on holiday, w...