Crushed by Deborah Coonts #Review #giveaway #goddessfish

Mar 8

Posted by brriske

Crushed

by Deborah Coonts

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GENRE: Contemporary Romance

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BLURB:

In Napa Valley, he who has the best grapes wins. And in the pursuit of perfection, dreams and hearts can be crushed.

Sophia Stone is a widow on the brink of an empty nest, stuck in an unsatisfying job managing the vineyard for a mediocre Napa vintner. Faced with an uncertain future she wonders how do you choose between making a living and making a life? Between protecting your heart and sharing it? Five years ago, after her husband was killed in an accident, Sophia put her heart and dreams on ice to care for those around her. Now her home, her dreams, and her family’s legacy grapes are threatened by the greed of the new money moving into the Valley. Sophia has a choice—give up and let them take what is hers, or risk everything fighting a battle everyone says she can’t win.

Nico Treviani has one goal in life: make brilliant wine. A woman would be an unwanted distraction. So, while recognized as one of Napa’s premier vintners, Nico finds himself alone… until his brother’s death drops not one, but two women into his life—his thirteen-year-old twin nieces. In an instant, Nico gains a family and loses his best friend and partner in the winemaking business. Struggling to care for his nieces, Nico accepts a job as head winemaker for Avery Specter, one of the new-money crowd. And he learns the hard way that new money doesn’t stick to the old rules.

When Sophia Stone gets caught in the middle of Nico’s struggle to remain true to himself or sacrifice his convictions to make stellar wine, both Sophia and Nico are faced with a choice they never imagined. A choice that might extinguish the hope of a future neither expected.

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Except for the letter.

From her landlord.

At least the return address was his—and Sophia was certain he hadn’t moved from the corner lot at the bottom of her hill. She could probably throw a bottle and hit his roof, with a little help from the wind

Charlie had owned this patch of five acres on the top of Howell Mountain since his parents had died in a small plane heading up from L.A. over thirty years ago. Sophia had lived here for fifteen of those years and, through feast and famine, the ups and downs of the wine industry, she’d never received a certified letter from Charlie. In fact, she couldn’t remember having received any letter from Charlie. Their business dealings were usually hammered out at the kitchen table over a bottle of wine and sealed with a handshake. Napa Valley was a handshake kind of place.

Sophia reached up and rubbed the worn piece of iron Daniel had nailed to one of the porch supports. Tocco Ferro. Her family had been steeped in the ways of the Old Country; her husband had become a believer. Touch iron to ward off bad luck. Being a bit too pragmatic, Sophia didn’t necessarily believe, but it couldn’t hurt. God knew she’d had enough rough patches. With a finger, she traced the initials the four of them had carved in the porch support. Time had whittled their number to one … almost.

Tapping the white legal-sized envelope on her open palm, she squinted against the sun as she looked out over her small patch of heaven. A rolling hillside with a couple of acres under vine, grapes from the Old Country, grafts of her grandfather’s original vines. A small garden flanked the house. Her own private retreat sheltered from prying eyes by a ring of trees.

The farmhouse had been billed as a “fixer-upper.” She and Daniel had packed up the kids, moving up valley from the Bay Area, and spent the next several years making the remnants of a house into a home. They’d bribed the kids into helping by letting them paint their own rooms. Dani had picked pink, hot pink. As if the view from his window wasn’t enough, Trey had chosen wood paneling and a bucolic scene of vineyards on one wall. When he’d moved away for college, Sophia hadn’t had the heart to change it. Perhaps she’d harbored the hope that he would come home someday. He hadn’t. Now Dani was poised to fly.

Soon Sophia would be alone, the house emptied of youthful buoyancy. The prospect filled her with dread. Stripped of purpose, she half-feared she would grow brittle like the old vines until the weight of loneliness shattered her into bits and pieces of who she used to be. When Daniel had been killed, she’d had the kids. Now the false friend of sadness stayed ever near, her house echoing with memories. But memories didn’t make a life any more than the past made a future. However, the past was her tether. Without it, Sophia felt she would float away like a balloon loosed to the sky, growing ever smaller until vanishing from sight.

While the house cradled her past, the rows of vines just reaching their peak marching down the hill across her two acres held her dreams. Her grapes, started from grafts from her grandfather’s stock back in Italy, each juice-filled orb bursting with hope, with promise. Her life’s work hanging on the verge of a promise.

Through the screen door, the aroma of a cake on the verge of disaster wafted into Sophia’s consciousness, and she turned and bolted for the kitchen, the screen clattering shut behind her. With a dishrag to protect her hand, she opened the oven. The smell of chocolate carried on billows of steam engulfed her. She waved it away, squinting through the heat. She deposited the cake pan on the stainless steel countertop. Pressing her thumb lightly on the cake, she let out her breath in a long rush. Just in time.

Her mother loved chocolate cake. Sophia planned to visit her this afternoon. Perhaps a peace offering would soften her harsh moods of late.

Sophia spied the letter, pristine white and accusing, laying casually on the sideboard where she had tossed it in her haste. Without further thought, she stuffed it in the old cookie jar on the countertop and crammed on the lid. That cookie jar held a lifetime of happiness and heartache—her marriage license, the kids’ birth certificates, Daniel’s death certificate and obituary—it could handle the letter as well. Whatever problem lurked inside that envelope, it could wait.

Leaving the cake to cool, Sophia strode through the door to the porch, pushing through the screen and down the steps. The grapes, fragrant in the midday sun, neared perfection—harvest a few days away, at best. Sophia had plans for those grapes, unique varietals that would make unusual yet palatable wine … if she could just figure out the last piece. She was close, though, closer than ever before. Grapes—creating them, growing them, cajoling them to trust her—they were her true passion. Unfortunately dreams didn’t pay the bills, as her mother never missed a chance to bludgeon her with that little bit or ironic reality. So Sophia had to sell her skills to pay the bills and now found her days consumed with tending to grapes owned by Pinkman Vineyards, one of the vast commercial operations in the valley, that turned her carefully nurtured grapes into mediocre table wine.

She walked the rows testing the scent once more—the perfume of near perfection as her grandfather called the sweetness of grapes. Memories filtered through the shadows of time like wraiths, translucent, elusive … fleeting. When she quieted, stilled her mind and opened her heart, Sophia could hear his voice, rich and deep, his laugh, and smell the scent of earth and sun that clung to him, the wine on his breath. But, she couldn’t see him anymore. Like sun on paper, time had weathered and faded her mental pictures until only shadows remained, as if the present was slowly erasing the past.

Worry dogged her, the letter and its unknown message on her mind as she tended to each vine, brushing back the canopy, weighing the clusters. This far along in the season not much remained to do; nature would run her course. This year Sophia had planted wildflowers and grasses under the vines to entice the bugs and keep them off the fruit. The plan had worked well, as had her choice to prune more aggressively than normal this past winter. Under her care, her grandfather’s grapes flourished, and just now they were beginning to trust her, to give her their best.

This year’s wine had the potential to be the stuff of dreams.

At the far end of her property movement across the fence caught Sophia’s attention. Shading her eyes with one hand, she still had to squint against the assault of the sun. Her next-door neighbors had sold their property recently to Specter Wines, a new player with new money. Scuttlebutt had it the owner had made a mint somewhere back east. Sophia shook her head as she watched heavy equipment struggle to tame the hillside, prepare it for planting. These days it seemed just about every rich guy wanted a piece of Napa to cultivate his own grapes, make a signature vintage that would rock the world.

As if it was that easy.

>This is the first book in the Hearts of Napa series and ends in an HEA. Sophia is a widow, raising grapes for a man who makes mediocre wine. Nico is the scientist behind the blends, but forced to work for someone else in order to make ends meet.

>This story is set in beautiful Napa Valley. It is very obvious the author is a wine lover. Her descriptions of the palate and grapes were extremely detailed, almost reading like poetry. I am not a wine drinker, so the flowery descriptions, while beautiful, just had me skimming to get to some action or dialogue.

>The conflict in the book is mostly through misunderstanding or contracts, with only one slightly suspenseful scene. I was a bit confused on Sophia’s daughter, Dani. She is an adult and works for Nico. I thought the romance would be between them for awhile. Trying to change my romantic couple to Nico and Sophia was hard for me due to my misunderstanding.

>I am a reviewer for Romance Author’s that Rock. This book is appropriate for an adult audience. I am giving the book 4 hearts. Wine lovers will enjoy the prose and setting.

>Goodreads – https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1569724564?book_show_action=false

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

My mother tells me I was born in Texas a very long time ago, but I’m not so sure—my mother can’t be trusted. She’ll also tell you I was a born storyteller. That I believe—I have the detention notices and bad-conduct reports to prove it. However, the path from minor hyperbolist, or as I prefer to think of my former self, Grand Master of the Art of Self-Prevarication, to the author of the New York Times Notable Crime Novel and double Rita ™ finalist, Wanna Get Lucky?, the book that launched the bestselling series, was a bit tortured.

Someone once told me I lived a peripatetic life—yes, I had to look it up. And he was right. I’ve been everything from a mom, business owner, accountant, wife, pilot, flight instructor, lawyer …worse, a tax lawyer… to a writer. The three personas I’ve kept suit me the best: mom, flight instructor, and writer. And the other personas I’ve tried on then shrugged out of and discarded like an itchy coat were great grist for the story mill.

Chasing stories keeps me busy and out of jail…for the most part. Researching in Vegas can be a bit… sketchy.

Prodded by the next adventure and the police, I keep moving. Right now I have a house in Texas, but that will change soon. I lived in Vegas for 15 years—the longest I’d stayed anywhere. And I get back there often. But other places, too, are calling.

Someone asked me the other day where I lived. The question stopped me cold. Finally I said, “On Southwest Airlines, third row, window seat, either side.” Always in search of a story. And the adventure would be perfect if they could just stock a split of nice Champagne.

http://www.deborahcoonts.com

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Tweets by DeborahCoonts

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/crushed/id1074006072?mt=11

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GIVEAWAY

Deborah will be awarding a $50 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.