Blush

April 12, 2021
Brenner’s lovely latest (after Summer Longing) begs to be read with a view and a glass of wine as three generations of Hollander women—and the men who orbit them—come together at their family’s struggling winery, each fighting their own inner battles. Vivian, the matriarch, doesn’t have faith in her son’s ability to run the business, and resents her husband’s unwillingness to include her in decisions. Leah, Vivian’s daughter, harbors anger that her father doesn’t trust her to run the winery and frustration that her usually supportive husband has lately become pushy. College student Sadie has lost her position working with a professor she idolizes and can’t find the inspiration to work on her thesis. These three women find a way to reclaim their power by starting a “trashy” book club, reading romance novels from the 1980s that they discover in the winery’s library. In the process, they learn secrets about the family and the estate that could mean the end of the winery—or new beginnings in both business and love. Brenner tackles complex issues including gender inequality and the devaluation of women’s interests with a light hand, balancing heavy topics with copious descriptions of wine, cheese, and classic romances. This is sure to please. Agent: Adam Chromy, Movable Type.

April 15, 2021
What can we learn from the glitzy novels of the 1980s? As Vivian, Leah, and Sadie are about to learn, quite a bit. As in the heyday of sex-and-shopping novelists Jackie Collins, Judith Krantz, and Nora Roberts, Brenner draws together a multigenerational cast of characters, each of whom has been slighted by fate. Vivian is the matriarch of the Hollander family, and, with her husband, Leonard, she has spent decades building up a successful vineyard and winery out of the difficult Cutchogue, New York, soil. Well, at least Leonard gets the credit for it while she was long ago pushed into building a family and a beautiful house and, briefly, a "trashy novel book club." As a child, Leah longed to join the book club, too, but Vivian snatched the torrid novels out of her daughter's hands. As a young woman, Leah longed to join the family business, but her father chauvinistically chose her slacker brother, Asher, instead. Now in her late 40s, Leah runs a successful Manhattan cheese shop and has raised her own daughter, Sadie, now a college senior. Sadie, too, has had her hopes dashed, not only by her boring, athletic boyfriend, but also by her adviser, who may have to drop her from the honors program if she doesn't nail down her thesis topic soon. Gathered at the family vineyard for an important announcement, the women are devastated to learn that Leonard must sell the entire estate. As each struggles to find her own way to stop the sale, they unexpectedly rediscover the pleasures not only of trashy novels, but also of talking to each other. Although the storyline is a bit predictable, Brenner deftly pulls from the canon for steamy encounters and dramatic confrontations--some worthy of a Dynasty reboot. A perfect beach read about a family crisis resolved by women.

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May 15, 2021
Vivian and Leonard Hollander spent more than four decades making Hollander Estates Vineyard a success. But now a financial reversal means everything is up for sale. As Vivian struggles with losing the family business and her home, she is joined for the summer by her daughter, Leah, and her granddaughter, Sadie. When Sadie discovers her grandmother's old book club journal in the family library, it may not only be the key to her academic future but also the key to the future of the family business. Jam-packed with outrageous drama, sexy passion, and dysfunctional family dynamics, Brenner's (Summer Longing, 2020) delectable soap opera is the epitome of escapist reading pleasure. It is also an homage to the glitz-and-glam novels of the 1980s, a brilliantly conceived and expertly executed tale that provides a welcome reassessment of the often underestimated but in their own way fiercely feminist works of Jackie Collins, Judith Krantz, Shirley Conran, and the other big-shoulder-padded popular fiction stars of the time. Brenner starts with the clever concept of women bonding in a book group dedicated to "trashy" novels and spins it into beach-reading gold.

COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

May 28, 2021

In this new addition to the Regency-set "Westcott" series, recently widowed Lydia Tavernor wants Someone To Cherish but would rather have a lover than a husband after the numbing servitude of marriage to Rev. Isaiah Tavernor. In Brenner's Blush, college senior Sadie Bailey discovers that straitlaced Grandma Vivian once ran a book club devoted to scandalous women's fiction. To find respite from griefover her grandfather's death, Marisa Rosso travels to a seaside Cornish village, where she helps locals save their beloved bakery (well known to Colgan's fans) in Sunrise by the Sea (100,000-copy paperback and 30,000-copy hardcover first printing). On the Terminal Ward at the Glasgow Princess Royal Hospital, life-hungry 17-year-old Lenni joins forces with 83-year-old rebel Margot in debuter Cronin's The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot (150,000-copy paperback and 25,000-copy hardcover first printing). With The Paper Palace, Heller, HBO head of drama, turns in a first novel about a woman who makes a momentous and long-overdue decision one bright Cape Cod morning. Diagnosed with a terminal illness, newly married Lauren decides to leave her husband 12 letters to guide him through the first year without her in Higgins's Pack Up the Moon. Killed in a hit-and-run in Nantucket, novelist Vivi is given heavenly permission to spend a year watching over her children, her best friend, and her ex-husband in Hilderbrand's Golden Girl (750,000-copy first printing). In Phillips's When Stars Collide, opera diva Olivia Shore and Thaddeus Walker Bowman Owens, backup quarterback for the Chicago Stars, are paired on a nationwide tour promoting a luxury watch brand with tumultuous results (150,000-copy first printing). Debuter Ray's The Missing Treasures of Amy Ashton features a once-aspiring artist now running from a tragedy in her life by simply collecting beautiful objects--until the collection-conscious little boy whose family moves in next door makes her rethink things (100,000-copy first printing).

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