Review: Dessert is always the best part!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 05 16, 2013
This is the third installment in the Winemaker's Dinner Series and picks up where Entrée left us...an emotional a puddle of mush on the floor.We are back in Miami with Ivan six months after the disaster proposal that crushed his hopes and dreams.  He has thrown himself into his career and, in theory, he should be happy with the success he has.  He is, in a way.  But in those quiet moments that work and patients and new expansion plans can't fill is when the pain takes over.  The Band-Aid Ivan has found to help get him through those moments is just that, a temporary fix to cover a wound that refuses to heal.  He's been through broken hearts before...surely he can get over this, too, right? Unfortunately, right now, it isn't looking that way.Jaden has just wrapped up filming her successful season of One Hot Dish and is beyond happy to close that chapter in her life and say a long-awaited adios to her prick co-host, Damian.  Damian, the self-centered egotistical ass that ruined her life...well, she was just as much to blame now, wasn't she.  With the season wrapping up, she will be headed back "home" to Miami for a two-month break.  Now she will just have to decide on what to do with her time there....hide or take a stand and fight for the man she left behind, broken.Together they will need to find their ways back to a sense of peace and, ultimately, happiness...whether it's together or apart.  You have to go through Hell to appreciate Heaven and the journey they have ahead of them, even six months after the last night they saw one another, is going to be a rough one.Let me start my part of this review by saying this book took the exact opposite direction I assumed it was going to take....and at the risk of sounding like a cold-hearted bitch, I have to say I am beyond happy it went in this direction.  This book is considerably darker than the others in the series.  That being said, I don't think I would have been satisfied if this book wasn't dark.  Ivan is reeling and broken.  He was ready to spend his life with Jaden and she threw his love and adoration back in his face when she declined his proposal and confessed her "adultery".  It would be unbelievable, albeit less painful, if he was sad for a month and then got back to a business-as-usual attitude.  I was sobbing by page 16, but as you know, those are the kind of books I love most.  I love to feel what the character feels...and to feel Ivan's utter defeat was truly an experience I won't soon forget.  I was a bundle of anxious nerves through this read...until the very last 10ish pages.  Damn...those last few pages are some I carry with me for quite some time.  Ivan is truly an artist with words.  There are a few paragraphs that are so well written and the words are spoken with such love behind them I must have read them twenty times after finishing the book.  Freaking perfect!So here I am...all sad that I'm finished with the book and, of course, am dying to hear what's next for Ivan but I can't help but think of one of Ivan's favorite sayings...."Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened".  Thank you, Ivan for an amazing finish to a series I will continue to recommend to all of the new readers I come across and thank you for, well,  just being you!