An estranged, dysfunctional family reunites for a summer wedding on Corfu, a rugged island paradise off the coast of Greece, in the insightful The Island Villa by prolific British author Sarah Morgan (The Summer Seekers; One Summer in Paris; The Christmas Sisters). Family matriarch Catherine Swift is a wildly successful romance novelist. Her own life, however, isn't so happily-ever-after. Married three times with two daughters conceived from different husbands, she is tying the knot for a fourth time. Might these nuptials offer a chance for mother-daughter reconciliation--and for her two adult children, eight years apart, to finally bond?
The two daughters couldn't be more different. Thirty-year-old Adeline, the older one--emotionally buttoned-up and self-reliant--is hesitant to attend the wedding. She was only eight years old when her parents divorced, and she's skeptical about her mother's wedded bliss. Nevertheless, after Adeline breaks up with her beau, she heads to Corfu. There she's reunited with Cassie, her starry-eyed sister who secretly aspires to be a writer; her father, Catherine's second husband, died when Cassie was just three years old. Cassie is excited about the wedding--until secrets revealed disarm both sisters. They ultimately find common ground, commiserating about their mother's choice for a husband. Will the family finally come together or will things, once again, fall apart?
Relationships between mothers, daughters, and sisters are common in Morgan's fiction, and in The Island Villa she skillfully portrays complex emotional dynamics. Readers will be swept up by well-drawn characters, each with her own romantic predicament, and this deft fictional examination of fragile and frayed familial bonds. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines