Sunflower Publishing Book Reviews

                                                                      Never Too Late     By TA Williams  SUMMARY A second chance to realise her dreams..   A classically trained pianist, Steph works as a recording engineer for a small studio when she is offered a job of a lifetime. Travel to the Italian Riviera to help the world-famous band, Royalty record their reunion album after a decade-long hiatus. Steph could certainly do with the distraction. Her boyfriend, who happens to be her boss, is increasingly unreliable and erratic and she is waiting for news from her doctor after a recent biopsy. So an all-expense paid trip to Italy is the perfect escape. What she doesn't expect is an instant connection with the son of Royalty's lead singer. With her career and her heart at a crossroads, wh...

    In the Shadows of the Apennines by Kimberly Sullivan SUMMARY: The sleepy little Abruzzo mountain town of Marsicano seems about as far as Samantha can flee from her failed marriage and disastrous university career. Eager for a fresh start, Samantha begins to set down roots in her Italian mountain hideaway. At first, the mountain retreat appears idyllic, but an outsider’s clumsy attempts at breaking into the closed mountain community are quickly thwarted when the residents discover Samantha’s snarky blog ridiculing the town and its inhabitants. Increasingly isolated in her mountain cottage, Samantha discovers the letters and diaries of Elena, a past tenant and a survivor of the 1915 Pescina earthquake. Despite the fact that a  century separates the two women, Samantha feels increasingly drawn into Elena’s life, and discovers startling parallels with her own. MY REVIEW: T his is an intriguing and absorbing story about how someone from the past rescues someone...

  A Chance in A Million   By TA Williams SUMMARY Having left the army to recover from a traumatic experience,  Captain Jane Reed  is on her way to Venice to assist  Lady Veronica Cooper , a world-famous writer who has lost her mojo. Plagued by grief and sleepless nights, Jane soon finds a kindred spirit in Veronica, coping with her own loss after the death of her husband. When the two relocate to Veronica’s villa in the countryside to escape the summer tourists, Jane meets the rest of the Cooper family – including Veronica’s brooding son,  David . With his own tragic past, David has resigned himself to a life of solitude. Jane finds herself determined to bring joy back into his life, even if it means finally spilling her secrets. Can Jane and David help each other heal, and find love in the process, or are some scars too deep to treat?   MY REVIEW: Destiny, sometimes referred to as fate is a predetermined course of events or is it? I re...

    Lest We Forget (Per Non Dimenticare) By Dr Allison Buck SUMMARY: Italy is full of idyllic hilltop towns teeming with centuries of history. Soriano nel Cimino, located in the Tuscia region of Lazio is one of those. On June 5, 1944, the day after Rome was liberated, this small town was nearly destroyed by Allied bombing. In 1994 for the 50th anniversary of the bombing, first-hand testimonies were collected and printed by some of the survivors and made available in Italian. This book contains those same testimonies of devastation, resilience, strength, and re-birth translated into English. It includes testimonies from fascists, antifascists, and partisans. Cold-blooded murder by the hands of the Nazis as they retreated to the north and scavenged to find enough wood and nails in the rubble to build the coffins to bury the almost 200 victims of the bombing. Soriano nel Cimino has now been rebuilt, but scars still run deep in the generations which followed. Every day the...

    Lorenzo’s Vest  by Graham Hofmann SUMMARY Lorenzo's Vest offers an entertaining understanding of Italy and Italians as observed through the eyes of a straniero. (foreigner) It gives the reader, in just a few pages, a real insight into the Italy of the past, its history, its politics and its struggle to become a modern nation; questioning those who still suggest that true Italian nationhood has yet to be achieved. This insight extends to painting a vivid picture of life in Italy today, the exquisite joys to be absorbed, alongside the frustrations of experiencing life in the Green Heart of Italy, a truly wonderful part of the country. Graham takes you by the hand as you join him on his journey as a Brit into the everyday world of Umbria. The journey vividly shows his day-to-day life as a part-time visitor, immersion into the local community, his experiences and the colourful characters that become friends on the way.   MY REVIEW: I enjoyed this book. ...

                                                              The Tuscan Secret By Angela Petch SUMMARY: ll Mulino. An old crumbling mill, by a winding river, nestled in the Tuscan mountains. An empty home that holds memories of homemade pasta and Nonna’s stories by the fire, and later: the Nazi invasion, and a family torn apart by a heartbreaking betrayal. Anna is distraught when her beloved mother, Ines, passes away. She inherits a box of papers, handwritten in Italian and yellowed with age, and a tantalizing promise that the truth about what happened during the war lies within.  The diaries lead Anna to the small village of Rofelle, where she slowly starts to heal as she explores sun-kissed olive groves, and pieces together her mother’s past: happy days spent herding sheep across Tuscan meadows cruelly interrupted ...