Publication Day Push and Review: Under A Siena Sun by T.A. Williams

Under a Siena Sun by T.A. Williams

Lucy needed a change of scene. She didn’t expect the change of a lifetime.

Doctors Without Borders has been Lucy Young’s life for the past four years. After being rescued from a conflict zone, she’s making a change from saving lives under gunfire to practising medicine in safe, serene Siena.

Now treating wealthy patients at a private clinic, she's never felt less comfortable. She’s used to helping those in dire need – not those in need of a nip and tuck. Her turmoil grows when she encounters injured tennis star David Lorenzo, whose smiles make Lucy forget her aversion to the rich.

She’s soon falling for the sportsman but is she losing herself in this world of excess? All she’s ever wanted was to help the underprivileged, so can her future lie in Siena at the clinic – with David?

This sunny romance is the perfect summer escape for fans of Lucy Coleman and Alex Brown.

http://mybook.to/SienaSun

https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/under-a-siena-sun

This is the second novel I've read by T.A.Williams and again I'm blown away by the descriptive narrative and the gorgeous Italian backdrop.

After her dramatic rescue from her medical clinic base in The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Lucy Young's relief to be safe and sound is palpable. As a busy doctor, she badly needed a holiday after her gruelling workload in DRC, but knew it would only take a few days before she'd get itchy feet again. After visiting her parents in the UK, she flew to Tuscany to attend her friend's wedding. Meeting up with her childhood friends leads to an unexpected job offer. The position conflicts with her personal views but she acknowledges it would allow her to fulfil some personal goals. After much soul-searching she accepts the job and buys a home, only to discover she's already met her mysterious neighbour… 

The author has a wonderful way of incorporating enticing descriptions of the featured locations as well as introducing us to dynamic and intelligent protagonists. As a doctor who has worked for Medicin Sans Frontieres for many years, Lucy is both passionate and compassionate about her work and the patients she treats. In comparison, David Lorenzo has earned millions as a professional tennis player, who is struggling to accept his injuries can't heal sufficiently to resume his career. For two people from differing backgrounds and unlike views of the world, I enjoyed how they interacted to find common ground and how both had to compromise to find a solution to keep their relationship intact.

The secondary characters surrounding Lucy and David add to the ambience of Siena and the surrounding Tuscan countryside as does the inclusion of the mouthwatering meals and drinks enjoyed by them all. Boris the black Labrador and his numerous siblings are an adorable inclusion and highlight how animals are an invaluable asset in forging friendships between their owners….eh, humans!

Overall, Under A Siena Sun is a delightful novel allowing the reader to escape to a beautiful part of the world. If you enjoy reading thought-provoking romances between intriguing characters, you'll love this and other books written by T.A. Williams.

***arc generously received courtesy of the publisher Canelo via NetGalley***

I’m a man. And a pretty old man as well. I did languages at university a long time ago and then lived and worked in France and Switzerland before going to Italy for seven years as a teacher of English. My Italian wife and I then came back to the UK with our little daughter (now long-since grown up) where I ran a big English language school for many years. We now live in a sleepy little village in Devonshire. I’ve been writing almost all my life but it was only seven years ago that I finally managed to find a publisher who liked my work enough to offer me my first contract.

The fact that I am now writing romantic comedy is something I still find hard to explain. My early books were thrillers and historical novels. Maybe it’s because there are so many horrible things happening in the world today that I feel I need to do my best to provide something to cheer my readers up. My books provide escapism to some gorgeous locations, even if travel to them is currently difficult.

Website: www.tawilliamsbooks.com

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/tawilliamsbooks

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TrevorWilliamsBooks/

Book Blog Tour Stop & Extract: Tipping Point by Emily Benet

Tipping Point by Emily Benet

The sun ... the ocean ... the farmhouse ... the scammer... the police... the 3-legged dog?

George and Ellen have retired to sunny Mallorca. Social butterfly Ellen is itching to make yacht-owning friends while George's heart is set on a secluded farmhouse in the country. In fact, now that they're no longer living busy London lives, they're beginning to realise they have very different ideas of happiness.

Private investigator Salva specialises in cases of adultery. That's why it's particularly embarrassing that he didn't realise his long-term girlfriend has been cheating on him. He has no time to nurse a broken heart, since his family are the victims of a property scam they urgently need him to solve.

Robyn Chase is giving talks on her self-help book, No More Toxic Relationships - 7 Years, 7 Lessons. She's finding it awkward being a relationship guru when her own boyfriend is avoiding her.

The sun is shining in Mallorca and everything looks beautiful. But the residents of one particular apartment block are about to discover it all might be too good to be true.

Amazon UK           Amazon US 

Extract from Tipping Point by Emily Benet

Is Happiness a choice?

The sun may be shining in Mallorca, but Salva is in a dark mood. He's a private investigator specialising in adultery who failed to notice his girlfriend was cheating on him. To make matters worse his family has landed a fresh problem on his doorstep. The villa they booked doesn't appear to exist. They want him to stop nursing his wounds and track down the scammer. Salva is hiding down by the pool when he bumps into speaker Robyn Chase, who gives him a taste of her no-nonsense coaching style. Is happiness a choice? Robyn sounds so confident he's taken in by her. Of course, he has no inkling that the relationship guru is hiding her own set of relationship problems.

EXTRACT:

She dropped her towel on the nearest sun lounger.

“How are you feeling today?” she asked.

It was a pointed question. She saw straight through him. He should tell her he was fine and let her get on with enjoying her afternoon.

“You don’t want to know,” he said, instead.

She raised her eyebrows and let out the lightest of laughs. “I see.”

Her amusement irritated him and he felt a need to clarify. “I’m angry.”

“That’s good.”

Had she misheard? “How is that good?”

“Anger is healthier than some other emotions, like self-pity, sadness…”

“Can’t I feel more than one at a time?”

She was facing the pool, her hands on her hips, but turned back to look at him.

“You can choose to feel as many as you like…”

He did feel sad, didn’t he? And if he felt sorry for himself, he was fully justified. Sonia had robbed him of everything. She had lied and cheated and ruined everything he held dear.

“…but why not choose to feel happy?”

She lowered herself down on to the side of the pool nearby, her angular shoulders hunched slightly as her palms pressed against the stone tiles. She had a delicate butterfly tattoo on the base of her neck, looking as though it had just come in to land. When she pushed her hair back, he could no longer see it.

He blinked, suddenly realising what she’d said.

“It’s not that easy! You don’t know what happened.” He didn’t like how petulant he sounded, but he couldn’t help it. It was enough that Sonia thought him a fool, he didn’t need this so-called relationship expert thinking he was making a fuss about nothing.

“True,” she said, “but whatever happened, it doesn’t take away your power to choose how to feel.”

“OK, look…” He shook his head and leant forward. She just wasn’t getting it. She was talking out of her arse because to her, it was all theory. “I found out my girlfriend of six years, who I was thinking of proposing to, was cheating on me.”

She didn’t say anything.

“Like, badly cheating on me. My neighbour saw her with two different guys before he came over to tell me… I’ve wasted six years of my life and you’re telling me I should choose to be happy?”

“You feel wronged,” she said.

His eyes widened at the understatement. The anger he felt towards Sonia had now turned to frustration towards this annoyingly calm young woman. He moved from the bench to sit beside her with his legs bent in front of him. In the back of his mind, he realised that it wasn’t normal to get into a conversation like this with someone he barely knew and that it would be best if he left her alone. Yet he’d been alone all day with his thoughts and he couldn’t keep a lid on them anymore.

“I don’t feel wronged,” he said, “I was wronged.”

She nodded and he felt a tiny release in his chest to at least have that truth accepted.

“OK. You were wronged.”

“I was wronged,” he echoed. “She stole six years of my life.”

It sounded a little melodramatic, even to him, but it was kind of true.

“Six years of your life,” she echoed. “Didn’t you have any good times at all? Didn’t you have any valuable experiences or learn anything new?”

“Yes, of course, but I’m talking about our relationship. I invested everything I had into it: a lot of love, a lot of money, a lot of sweat and tears… we were supposed to be headed in the same direction.”

Once again, she didn’t say anything. He noticed her feet turning circles in the water and thought about saying it didn’t matter, to forget about it. It was his problem, not hers.

“How much energy are you willing to give to this story?” she asked, her eyes meeting his. Dark green, with flecks of amber. He stared back at her. Story? Did she think he was making this up?

“This isn’t a story.”

“Of course it is. We turn everything into a story, giving it our own little twist. You could have gone for the ‘Oh lucky me, I almost got married to a cheat, but luckily I had this great neighbour who had my back and was brave enough to tell me what he’d seen, and in hindsight, I realise why it had taken me six years to get to the point of asking her to marry me because I guess, deep down, I knew she wasn’t quite right for me, and although it hurts, I’ve come out of this stronger than before and even surer of what I want.’”

Emily Benet is a journalist, award-winning blogger and author of contemporary fiction. Her books include the blog-to-book Shop Girl Diaries, Wattpad hit Spray Painted Bananas and social media romcom #PleaseRetweet. She lives in Mallorca with her husband and daughter and the sunny island is the setting for her latest novels The Hen Party and Tipping Point. She writes regularly for the luxury lifestyle magazine abcMallorca.

www.facebook.com/EmilyBenetAuthor

www.instagram.com/emilybenetauthor

https://twitter.com/EmilyBenet