REVIEW:

Imagine visiting a vineyard in Tuscany where they hand you a glass of a yummy Italian red as soon as you step foot on the property. Reading Julianne MacLean’s latest novel is kind of like that. No delayed gratification required.

The plot starts spilling on the very first page when Fiona receives a phone call from Italy informing her that her father died and she needs to come to his winery in person for the reading of his will. The tricky part is that he’s her secret father, and she only learned of him at the age of 18 when her mother confessed that the man who raised her was not in fact her bio dad.

Chapters then alternate between Fiona’s time in present-day Tuscany and the 1980s when her mom encountered the man who filled up 50% of her gene pool. How could this have happened while her mom was married to someone else? Will his “legitimate” children accept what he felt she deserved to inherit? When will stupid COVID end so I can visit Tuscany myself?

These are all questions that had me guzzling this story like it was Boone’s Farm Wine and I was still in my 20s. Since These Tangled Vines was a Kindle Unlimited selection, it was priced like it too. ;)

PUBLISHER SYNOPSIS:

From the USA Today bestselling author of A Curve in the Road comes a sweeping and captivating tale of one woman’s journey to the lush vineyards of Tuscany — and into the mysteries of a tragic family secret.

If Fiona has learned anything in life, it’s how to keep a secret — even from the father who raised her. She is the only person who knows about her late mother’s affair in Tuscany thirty years earlier, and she intends to keep it that way… until a lawyer calls with shocking news: her biological father has died and left her an incredible inheritance — along with two half siblings.

Fiona travels to Italy, where the family is shocked to learn of her existence and desperate to contest her share of the will. While the mystery of her mother’s affair is slowly unraveled, Fiona must navigate through tricky family relationships and tense sibling rivalries. Fiona both fears and embraces her new destiny as she searches for the truth about the fateful summer her mother spent in Italy and the father she never knew.

Spilling over with the sumptuous flavors and romance of Tuscany, These Tangled Vines takes readers on a breathtaking journey of love, secrets, sacrifice, courage — and most importantly, the true meaning of family.