Kirkus
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After graduating from business school at UC Berkeley, a bright young woman on her way to a job in Manhattan finance takes a major detour at a Sonoma winery."I would never have predicted that a winery could change my life. But when I walked into the empty tasting room at Bellosguardo on the first weekend in May of my thirtieth year, a feeling came over me. The kind you get when you taste a new food for the first time and you know it will be your favorite, or when you see a guy across the bookstore and you know he'll be your new boyfriend." Some readers will feel immediate concern upon reading the first three sentences of publishing exec Parker's debut, regardless of whether they are familiar with the kind of serendipitous premonition narrator Hannah Greene has just described. The problem is, that's an awful lot of plot to give away in the first few sentences of a novel. The only hope at this point is that ensuing events are going to prove Hannah totally mistaken. Because if we already know that she's about to change the whole course of her life and that it's all going to work out brilliantly...that's a problem. Unfortunately, nothing that threatens to put any kind of serious crimp in her unfolding success and happiness will be allowed to interfere. The predictability of the storyline might have been offset if the Sonoma setting provided a showcase for serious wine and food writing. But this book has more to teach about the uses of social media for marketing than it does anything else. There's also quite a lot of focus on details of not-very-interesting clothes and makeup. When she bursts in on her boss getting dressed for a party, Hannah finds her in a slip and kitten heels. " 'You look great so far,' I said. She did. The slip was slimming and she'd already put on makeup. It looked like she knew how to contour." There is never the slightest danger of everything not working out perfectly, and these people are nowhere near interesting enough to have a whole book written about them.Sweet and safe. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.