Chaos Among the Vines
Gemma Brocato
Contemporary Romance
Through a fortunate series of events, Will Bradford’s winery hits the map in a huge way, with demand far outpacing production. After months of chaos and unmanageable growth he decides to bring in a specialist to help him get organized.Â
Queen of organization Avalon Reece is a closet chaotic. She’s rebelled against a childhood of wanderlust with a hippie mother by striving to maintain order in her life. Everything has a place and she means to see it there. For her, love is messy and she avoids it at all costs. Until she accept a consulting job with Will to put his life in order.
Will sees beyond the straight-laced, orderly woman to the free-spirit Avalon tries hard to hide. That’s the woman he wants, in spite of how it might impact his business.
Uncaged Review: This steamy romance was a fun read. It would be a good beach read for the summer. I’ll start off with my only complaint, and it is a personal one. The people in the seem to like the smug, conceited, silly smile or leer called a smirk. It seems to be a very popular word but is one which grates on my nerves. Once, maybe twice in a book is more than enough for me. Needless to say it was more than that in the book.
With that said, the smirks didn’t take away from the story. You have Avalon, a tightly wound efficiency expert. She is so connected that she has a smart watch, her iphone, ipad and lsptop. The first two are attached to her almost all the time.
Then there is Will, the owner of a vineyard called Rolling in the Clover. He is the exact opposite of Avalon (Ava).
The other characters are Guin-Ava’s mother, Drake-Will’s Accountant and friend, Penny-Drake’s sister and pursuer of Will, Jared-Will’s father whose vineyard failed, Meg- Jared’s old secretary and Will’s until he discovers she is embezzling from him, Beth-Ava’s best friend and masseuse.
The story opens with Guin showing up at Ava’s apartment. Ava know something is amiss and soon discovers her mother stole (Guin calls it borrowed) from her last employer when a man she calls Bad-Ass shows up demanding money, a lot of money to the tune of $240,000. Ava has just been assigned to work with Will to become better organized and more efficient. Ava sells a lot of her things and gives a down payment on her mother’s debt before applying for a loan to pay the rest. She ends up taking her mother with her for the job at Rolling in the Clover to protect her from being found by Bad-Ass, the man sent to collect the money from Guin.
Ava thought Will was attractive in his picture on his website, but in person he is so much more. She also discovers his business is a total mess even though he is successful. He has a large order to be filled but can’t seem to stay on task. It is while she is attempting to streamline the office that they discovers Meg’s perfidy. At that point, Will is trying to get Ava to let her hair down, literally and figuratively.
Meg did more than embezzle. She set him up so he wouldn’t be able to fulfill a big order, leading to failure. Guin discovers the depth of Meg’s sabotage of the business when she takes over the office when Will has Meg arrested. The rift between Will and his father, Jared widens when Jared wants Will to drop the charges against Meg until Will suggests he have Drake go through his past finances because Meg hinted at stealing from Jared, her former employer until Jared’s vineyard failed. Meanwhile, Penny is attempting to claim Will as hers, Beth is telling Ava to loosen up, and Ava and Will are finding an attraction between them they can’t deny.
The characters are dynamic and the storyline keeps you reading to discover what goes wrong next. The sizzling attraction between Ava and Will grows and Guin decides to go the straight and narrow while becoming friends with Will’s mother and other female friends.
It does have a happy ending, but getting there was a lot of fun. If you like your romance with hot sex and characters you won’t forget, you have it here
Reviewed by Barbara.
5 Stars
