If you're looking for a charming, Hallmark-esque read that's not as far-fetched, grab Miriam Parker's The Shortest Way Home immediately! Parker's sense of place and real, dimensional characters will draw you in immediately. You know the Hannah's and Ethan's in your life, you know that local business everyone loves but might soon go under, you recognize the gossipy but well-meaning Celeste, and the accident-prone older people who still act like they're twenty. Parker swirls these characters' stories together in ways that will have you finishing this book in one sitting!

Life is going well for Hannah - she's on vacation with her boyfriend in wine country (and she thinks he's going to propose) and is about to graduate with a Master's Degree and start her dream job in New York City. So why does her heart do funny things when she walks into the winery? Will she give up everything she has worked for to follow something she never knew that she wanted? A story of strength, finding yourself, and following your dreams to make a happy life.

Although the author has a very good style of writing, I found the plot elements too absurd to allow me to enjoy the book without a huge amount of cynicism.

Essentially, “girl walks into a wine tasting, chucks her fiancé, job at Goldman and her move to NYC. Within minutes, gets job revamping winery, falls in love and moves into luxury cottage”. I had trouble with these plot lines as well as being given TOO much information about wine. I was bored by the endless description of every variety of wine and the notes and flavors found in them.

The author has tremendous potential, but books like this should be labeled “A wine lovers Romance” not really woman’s fiction.

Hannah and soon-to-be fiancé, Ethan, are graduating grad school with their bright (and upscale) New York City futures with Hannah especially looking forward to living the high life, but fate intervenes when the couple visits a charming Sonoma winery and Hannah falls head-over-heels for the place and starts to brainstorm ideas for creating more business. Before she knows it (and much to Ethan’s chagrin), she has accepted a low-salaried job and is living in the winemaker’s estate cottage. While getting to know more of the locals and discovering the pitfalls of the position, she also learns more about herself and has to decide what she really wants out of life.

This was a charming and lovely story with engaging characters set in the glorious Northern California wine country, and the themes of "following your bliss,” “your money or your life,” or “living your best life" will tantalize many into rethinking their current situations. I also loved the librarian who mentored the young Hannah, and Parker's knowledge of books and authors will have readers taking notes for future reading.

Readers who enjoy stories with likeable characters, appealing settings, and a touch of romance will thoroughly enjoy Miriam Parker’s debut novel. This is also recommended for those who liked Laura Dave’s EIGHT HUNDRED GRAPES (also set in the California wine country) and books by Jenny Colgan, Nancy Thayer, and Kristan Higgins.

Thanks to the publisher for the advance reading copy.

If you dream of restarting, in a beautiful locale, while finding yourself, this is the book for you. Hannah is graduating graduate business school and ready to start her life with Ethan in New York when she visits a small winery in Sonoma County. Everett and Linda are trying to grow their small family winery when Hannah shows up and is an answer to some of their their challenges. Facing personal decisions and finding where one is feeling at home, Hannah is a likable character, as are all of the secondary characters. I recommend, particularly on that beach or summer vacation!

The Shortest Way Home initially struck my interest because I love a good comfy romance novel but that's not really what this book is. It does have aspects of that but the romance is more about the main character and Sonoma, California than it really is with another person. Hannah falls in love with Sonoma and with the family she ends up working with much more than she falls in love with one person. She becomes immersed in this family's life and in their winery. But before I get ahead of myself and write everything in the intro, let's get to the review.

Synopsis (from Goodreads):
After years of dreaming of and working toward a life more stable than the one she grew up in, Hannah is finally about to have everything she ever wanted. With a high-paying job, an apartment in Manhattan, and a boyfriend about to propose, all she and Ethan have to do is make it through the last couple of weeks of grad school, and the future they had planned will be theirs to keep.

But when they take a romantic weekend trip to Sonoma, and Hannah is spontaneously offered a marketing job at the first (and seemingly financially unstable) winery they visit and doesn't immediately refuse, their meticulously planned forever comes crashing down around them. And then Hannah impulsively does the unthinkable--she turns down her job in New York and decides to stay in California.

Abandoning your dream job and life shouldn't feel this good. But for Hannah, it is an eye-opening experience; and she realizes that maybe, after all her dream-chasing, she hasn't actually been caring for herself. And this new life certainly seems like a dream come true--living in a picturesque cottage overlooking a vineyard in lush Sonoma; new friends with pasts and hopes the likes of which she's never encountered before; and William, the handsome son of the winery owners and an aspiring film director who captures Hannah's heart only to leave the very city she let go.

The mission to rescue the failing winery becomes a mission to rescue Hannah from the image of herself she thought she wanted. The young girl who ached to escape Iowa and leave her past behind for a glamorous life is now given the chance to come to terms with the upbringing that made her who she is.

As I was getting to know Hannah through this book, the first thing that came to mind was "oh, she is not like me." She is outgoing, talks to strangers very regularly, and is pretty great at selling/marketing the wine and the winery once she is hired. I'm a stone-cold introvert, only talk to strangers in the most dire of circumstances, and would rather not have to convince people to buy anything (I used to have to convince people to sign up for credit cards. Me, a person who thinks credit cards are a bad decision in most circumstances lol). So, at first I thought connecting with Hannah might be a little difficult but luckily, I was wrong. The way she cares for her work and the people she works with was possibly the best part of the book.

She ends up visiting California with her boyfriend, Ethan for a quick vacation before they move to New York together. She has a position waiting for her at Goldman Sachs (barf) and Ethan is going to be working on an app with some of his friends. But, as you can probably guess, things don't go as planned. When they visit the little winery, it is like Hannah's eyes are opened for the first time. She talks to the bartender, William (i.e. love interest) and gives him a bunch of ideas for marketing the business that he ends up relaying to his mom (It is a family-owned business). After Ethan and her leave, she can't stop thinking about the place and ends up staying in Sonoma once Linda, William's mom, offers her a job. Needless to say, Ethan is pissed, but he's an asshole, so we don't care.

But not everything goes smoothly from there on out. Hannah is kind of thrown into a complicated situation. She finds out that the relationship between William's parents (Linda and Everett) is on the rocks. Hannah has to deal with a lot of drama and does it mostly by herself because William soon moves to New York to go to school to write screenplays. I don't want to give too much away because the sections where Hannah works through Linda and Everett's issues is my favorite and I don't want to take those surprises away from you.

While this story may be marketed as Hannah and William falling in love, to me it was much more about Hannah working at the winery, finding new friends, and dealing with this incredibly complicated relationship between her two bosses.

Linda works the sales part of the winery and Everett is very much behind the scenes, growing and tasting grapes, and working through the whole process of making sure the wine is the best (can you tell I don't drink? lol). I thought I had them figured out from the beginning as just another unhappily-married couple, but they are much more than that. Linda has a past lover she still has a thing for and Everett is (deep down) just looking to make Linda has happy as possible. The twists and turns of their relationship are what kept me reading.

All that being said, I did not feel this story was as well-written as it could've been. Some parts felt very rushed including Hannah deciding she was going to stay in Sonoma for the summer. It went so quickly. I know we want to get to the part where Hannah is living in Sonoma as fast as possible but it felt unbelievable and took me out of the story.

And probably more disappointing was that most of the story was paced perfectly. The way Linda and Everett's relationship is shown to us in little pieces throughout the book was perfectly done and made the ending that much sweeter. I wish we had that in the beginning as well. There are also some points that were more telling than showing, where I wanted to see the emotions of Hannah rather than be told them. The story was interesting and the characters were honestly quite well developed, but there were a few issues that kept The Shortest Way Home from being really amazing.

With all that said, I am giving The Shortest Way Home 3 out of 5 stars. It has some great elements and most of the characters were lovely to get to know and see interact, but, for me, it had a few too many problems for me to give it a higher rating.

The Shortest Way Home by Miriam Parker comes out July 31, 2018

Thank you, NetGalley and Penguin Group/Dutton for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Miriam Parker is clearly someone who has read a lot of books; it's obvious even if you aren't aware that she works in publishing. There are more than a few literary references and this is as much a love letter to books as it is to wine. 

It seems like a lot of characters have their lives completely together and know what they want to do in both the short- and long-term. Initially, this is true for Hannah, too, but it doesn't take long for her to take a leap of faith. And while there are some bumps in the road, it's also clear that this is actually the perfect job and life for Hannah. 

It's only a slight exaggeration to say that this book makes me want to completely shake up my life and go to wine country. I don't have a taste for wine yet, but this book makes me want to develop one. And it makes me wish that I did like northern California.

Either way, this is a fantastic debut and I am already eager for Miriam Parker's next book. Highly recommended.

The Shortest Way Home is a charming and pleasurable novel about a young woman who finds herself in a position to completely deter from her after graduate school plans. On a last trip before moving to New York, Hannah and her boyfriend, Ethan, go on a wine tasting trip to Sonoma, CA and while in Sonoma, she is entranced by the Bellosguardo winery-a small but lovely venue struggling to compete with the mass producing vineyards of the area. Hannah is charmed by the son of the owners and as she listens to him talk about the winery and changes that could be mad, she pictures herself as someone who could do just that. Leaving Ethan to continue to New York, Hannah becomes involved in the winery as a marketer, learning from the wife of the owner. There is more going on between them than Hannah first noticed and as she grows into her position, she also grows wrapped up in the stresses and decisions of them and in their personal relationship. All the while, she has been smitten by William, the owner’s son, and he with her. Unfortunately, he is leaving to go to grad school at NYU in a week.
Hannah gives it her all, facing the ups and downs of the owner’s relationship and the business of infusing the winery with life and recognition.

Thisis definetely a book about finding self. Hannah has just taken an extreme decision - the question is will it pay off? Or will she be left to pick up the broken pieces of her heart, curreer and relationships?
Well written with a gorgeous setting.

A great very believable story about a women redefining her life and what is happiness. It explores our relationships with friends, boyfriends, and parents and siblings and what society expects may not be what we need.

I'm sorry that I couldn't review this book... when I loaded it on the bluefire app, I couldn't get past a few pages past the dedication page. It froze my app three times and I had to even delete the app and reload it so I could use it again. Sorry. If this glitch gets fixed, I am happy to have the chance to review it for you. Am giving it 3 stars because it's not fair to give it less since I wasn't able to actually read it in the app.

I was not going to read any further than the first page, after the narrator brags about being able to take "mental pictures" rather than posting on Instagram. Maybe this book is great, I just admit to being a reader who does not enjoy books with main characters who bash other people's social media use.