Ever since she was a little girl learning to make decadent truffles in her family's chocolate shop, Juliet Arabella has been aware of the bitter feud between the Arabellas and the Mezzanottes. With their rival chocolate boutiques on the same street in Napa Valley, these families never mix. Until one night, when Juliet anonymously attends the annual masquerade ball. In a moonlit vineyard, she finds herself falling for a gorgeous stranger, a man who reminds her what passion is like outside of the kitchen. But her bliss is short-lived when she discovers her masked prince is actually Leo Mezzanotte, newly returned from Paris and the heir to her archenemy's confection dynasty.
With her mind in a whirl, Juliet leaves for Italy to represent the Arabellas in a prestigious chocolate competition. The prize money will help her family's struggling business, and Juliet figures it's a perfect opportunity to forget Leo…only to find him already there and gunning for victory. As they compete head-to-head, Leo and Juliet's fervent attraction boils over. But Juliet's not sure whether to trust her adversary, or give up on the sweetest love she's ever tasted...
As I said in a previous post, I was selected as a judge for a pretty cool award. As part of the judging I received books in the mail that I had about a month to read and review. I think that I reviewed 8 books during that time. I only felt two of them were good enough to be reviewed for all of our followers since they do not fall into the Vampireesque theme that we have typically going on.
Unless you have been living in a doomsday prepper underground bunker since the 1600s you know about William Shakespeare and his famous work Romeo and Juliet. Well technically it was first performed prior to 1597 but who is counting right. Anyways it has been redone and high school and college students around the world have performed it as a trial by fire for theatre classes. If by some happenstance you do not know the story it follows a young girl by the name of Juliet whose family are blood enemies of another family who just so happen to have a son named Romeo. Yup you guessed it, these bitter rivals have kids who start dating under the cover of darkness. Families find out, Juliet fakes her death, Romeo doesn’t realize it is faked, he kills himself, and then she awakes to find him dead and kills herself because she can’t live with fact that he is dead. So yeah one of those Happily Ever After stories.
Well Unmasking Juliet follows a young girl, Juliet Arabella, who is a chocolatier in the Napa Valley of California. Her family are not the only chocolate makers, in fact directly across the street is another chocolate boutique owned by the Mezzanottes, who not only are their bitter rivals, but in the past were partnered with Juliet’s great grandmother. Yup you can see where this is going. Well Juliet is dating a young businessman who has the power to make or break your chocolate business. When he was invited to the Mezzanottes for an important announcement he took Juliet along as his guest.
Juliet is a rush to get out of what she considered enemy territory goes to the garden. In the garden she meets a young man who she instantly feels connected to. Oh did I mention that it was a masquerade ball, yeah so he didn’t know who she was and she didn’t know who he was. Well over the course of the next couple of weeks, Juliet is trying to keep her families history alive, trying to figure out what to do to keep the charming Mezzanotte out of her mind at the same time as not disappointed her parents. Oh and her dog almost dies from eating chocolate.
Again this book is not necessarily on my list of books to read but I will tell you that once I started I couldn’t stop. The characters where so life like and the story line was so good that while you know it is a spin off of Romeo and Juliet you forget that when your reading. You just want to slap both of them, as well as their families during this book. I really liked it and I am glad that I took a chance, because it was well worth it. Not to mention the cover is really pretty.
About Teri Wilson
Teri Wilson is a romance novelist for Harlequin Books. Her most recent books include ALASKAN HOMECOMING, UNLEASHING MR. DARCY and UNMASKING JULIET. Teri is also a contributing writer at HelloGiggles.com, an entertainment website founded by Zooey Deschanel, Sophia Rossi and Molly McAleer. Teri loves romance, books, poetry and dancing every day.
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