The premise of this book completely drew me in. A young woman leaving behind her desk job to pursue her passion for wine and winemaking in France! The dream, right? Well, not quite. Yes. The main character ends up doing all those wonderful things. Against all staggering odds. Therein lies one of the main issues I had with this book - it's so wildly unrealistic that it detracted for the escapist fun it could have been. Samantha is just so bloody perfect and not at all a relatable character. Obstacles evaporate before her and perhaps the only saving grace to the book is that she, at least, doesn't end up with the so-called man of her dreams. She does, however, become the shining new star of Napa winemakers on her very first go around, with a multimillion dollar vineyard that she literally stumbles upon and is able to save from the clutches of a big Napa Valley wine producer with an unlikely surprise inheritance from her aunt. On the subject of her aunt. Was that side-plot really necessary?
Another great annoyance in reading this book. The dialogue. It was forced and unnatural. No one talks like that. Ever. And the stereotypes. Misogynistic, philandering French men. Gypsies. Coked out superstars. Old relics. The polarizing depiction of French winemaking vs California winemaking.
Then there is the banal, textbook descriptions of the winemaking process and wine tasting. Where is the passion? I say this as someone who loves wine and who has actually worked in the wine industry - at a winery. I was primed to love this book. But. there were too many missteps and, ultimately, it was disappointing. That is perhaps the best description for this book. So full of promise and so utterly letdown by one dimensional characters, poor dialogue, an outdated reliance on stereotypes, and impossibly perfect outcomes.. This book could have been so charming. It fell completely flat for me.

Great book with extremely well done characters. I read the whole thing in a day because I didn’t want to put it down at all. Super story that makes you want to revisit your own dreams.

Samantha has done all the right things her whole life. Made good grades. Graduated top of her class. Got a job chained to a desk but with great pay, benefits, and a secure future. She however loves wine. Deciding she doesn't want to spend forever chained to the same desk, she goes to France where she works on the grape harvest so she can learn how to make wine from start to finish. Her story is tied into her aunt Vivians who also lived in France as a model in her youth.

I assumed France. Artists model. Wine. All of these sounded like the premise of a great book. A woman leaving behind a secure future go follow her dreams? Wonderful idea. Only it falls so flat in this book. The author is apparently vineyard royalty which is wonderful, but the rest of us aren't. The dialogue isn't something I think anyone ever says in real life. Every page has so.someone drinking wine which is fine, but they have to spend half the page describing exactly what they taste, what field the grapes are from, etc. Its at times that are completely unnecessary as well. No one does this constantly with everyone in their life. The descriptions are so technical I got lost and had to flip back. All of this makes it so hard to get into the story I had to take breaks, skip pages, and force myself to finish. This may be a great read for someone who owns their own vineyard or is a winemaker, but the rest of us its just basically a winemakers manual that tries to throw a story around it. I tried but it just wasn't for me at all.

⭐

Thank you NetGalley, Linda Sheehan, and Black Rose Writing for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

I found this book very hard to get in to-too much of the story centered on wine and the vineyard (the title is a great indicator of the book itself. It would likely appeal more to an oenophile than it did to me.