AUTHOR: Eva Scott GENRE: Contemporary Romance PAGES: 384 RELEASED: 28 July 2021 SYNOPSIS: Small-town sweetheart Annalisa Cappelli has returned to Wongilly to take over her family's hardware store while she heals from a tragic loss. The business was hit hard by the pandemic, and now a Carpenter's Warehouse hardware superstore is opening in the district. There's no way Annalisa is going to let two hundred years of history go down the drain, but she's going to need to fight to keep her family's legacy alive. The one simple thing in her life is her no names, no complications, easy-breezy online relationship with GardenerGuy94. For now, their online flirtation is the only kind of romance Annalisa needs. Until she meets Ed Carpenter. Sexy as hell, he'd be the perfect man ... if he wasn't trying to destroy her business. Ed Carpenter is in Wongilly to offer the owner of a small hardware store a payout to pave the way for his family's next superstore. What he doesn't expect is for the owner to be the woman he's been talking to online. Annalisa is beautiful and passionate, and he's sure she's the one for him. But how can he reveal the truth without losing her? This book was kindly sent to me from Harlequin in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. Regional Victoria meets You’ve Got Mail in this sweet romance about legacy and dreams.
Annalisa Cappelli has big shoes to fill running her family’s hardware store, which has been a staple in the small regional town of Wongilly for over 150 years. Her family’s legacy weighs even heavier on her in the wake of the global pandemic and a continuing decrease in sales. To make matters worse, a new hardware superstore, Carpenter’s Warehouse, is set to open in the district, which will effectively drive her out of business. The one positive in her life is her online relationship with GardenGuy94, who is the first guy she’s been interested in since the death of her boyfriend. What she doesn’t realise is that GardenGuy94 is Ed Carpenter, one of the part-owners of Carpenter’s Warehouse. Working at his family’s company after losing his own business during the pandemic, Ed would rather be elsewhere pursuing his dreams. So when he has the chance to oversee the final stages of the new store, he jumps at the chance at being able to meet up with GoldfieldsGirl. What he wasn’t anticipating was GoldfieldsGirl actually being Annalisa, the woman who he’s meant to be offering a payout to. Ed knows who Annalisa is, but she has no idea that her enemy is the guy she’s slowly been falling for online. There’s a connection both online and physically, but Ed struggles to reveal the truth when he could lose her on both fronts. An enemies-to-lovers, online relationship, small-town romance set in Australia, inspired by an iconic 90s rom-com? Yep, definitely the makings of a super enjoyable read! This book had my name written all over it, and it certainly lived up to and exceeded expectations, delivering everything I was looking for and then some. Small-town romances are some of my favourite romances, and in particular I loved that it was Australian – not only do I really need to read more books set in Australia, but the setting of Wongilly was one I could so easily picture having grown up in a small regional community myself. I really enjoyed the cast of characters, from the old codgers who played cards in the hardware store, to Annalisa’s Nonna and her bestie Mel, and of course Annalisa and Ed themselves. They’re all characters I could so easily imagine and see in my own community, and they were also characters I definitely wanted to know more about, especially the old guys – they all had an interesting story to tell and it would be interesting to flesh out the world of Wongilly even more. Annalisa and Ed’s relationship was packed with all the emotions and they definitely hit me in the feels, both the good and the bad, throughout the course of the story. One of the things I really enjoyed were the newspaper articles scattered throughout which told the history of the Cappelli family, and the highs and lows they experienced over the years. It made the story feel even more real, like the town of Wongilly actually existed and the Cappelli family were real people. Small towns have such a rich history, and as someone who is both passionate about history and from a small town, I really connected with Eva weaving this into the story. I read this book in a day, which is a pretty good indication of how much I enjoyed it. It ticked all the boxes for a romance read, so if you’re a fan of Aussie romances, this is definitely a book to add to your TBR as soon as possible. |
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