Wow, what a gripping and powerful book! The second in the Transylvania trilogy, Love Odyssey is simultaneously heartbreaking, beautiful, riveting, suspenseful and marvelous. The first captured me fully and so has the second. Once I started reading it on my Kindle I couldn't put it down so walked around the house with it, ignoring everything else, getting completely lost in the words and emotions.

The book is set in the epic year of 1989 in Romania as well as in New York with flashbacks to the 1960s and 70s. Nicolae Ceaușescu is the steel-fisted billionaire and communist dictator of Romania while his people starve and barely survive. Politics, history and culture are important to this book but even more so are the themes of lasting love, ambition, righting wrongs and forgiveness.

Pregnant Dr. Anca Rodescu leaves her beloved but crippled Romania for New York. She is desperate not to but her husband Petre urges her to for her own and their baby's sake. He remains behind as he seeks to topple communism. Ahead nineteen years...Anca is a pediatrician in New York and Sandi is in college. Though Anca has a new life she is haunted and hunted by the past as she has many personal connections. We see what happens in both countries. I was on edge at times from the tension and wondering what would happen next. And oh, the ending!

All Historical Fiction readers ought to pick this up. It is remarkably researched and written with believable characters and plots. Plus the inclusion of interwoven history ties in wonderfully. Eastern Europe holds a personal fascination for me and is is not written about enough. But anyone would glean a lot from this sublime book. I absolutely cannot say enough about it and am afraid I am gushing!

My sincere thank you to Wayzgoose and NetGalley for allowing me the privilege of reading this enthralling book! Already anticipating the third.