A little later than intended but I am finally joining in on the tour for this wonderful book.
Love At First Sight
Jessica Gilmore
She’s in love. Just with the wrong man…
Nora is done with dating, but still dreams of finding the one. So when a handsome stranger comes to her rescue one night and vanishes leaving only a business card, it’s like a scene out of a movie…
It doesn’t take long for the two to ‘bump’ into each other again, and Nora falls for the perfect-on-paper Gabe. Only a few weeks later, he invites her to Sicily, and she cannot believe her luck!
Until Gabe is forced away for work, leaving her alone with his big and warm family in gorgeous Sicily who welcome her with open arms. Everyone but Luca, his older and distrustful brother, who is always around.
Soon Nora finds herself on a dreamy, romantic getaway-just with the wrong brother…
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This time of year I long for stories with a wonderful sense of place, to whisk me off somewhere and make me imagine that I can feel the sun on my face and soak up the culture…and a little romance never hurts. Love at First Sight ticks those boxes and then some, with a beautiful Sicilian vineyard as the setting and the food and the family, I felt transported and I was engrossed with Nora’s story.
I loved that Nora was a romantic and that she created the opportunity for her meet-cute, feeling that spark of infatuation, and was so happy for her when it seemed to work out. That faltered a little when she started trying to be a slightly different Nora to fit into Gabe’s life, which as much as it pains me to say I found very relatable. I’m not going to lie I did start to worry that Nora was going to let ‘fate’ play too much of a hand in her life and then end up with someone all wrong for her because she is such a fun and quirky character and was letting herself be moulded a little, but luckily my worries started to disappear when she got to Sicily.
The slow burn of the connection between Nora and Luca was delicious, especially because they were really having to fight against it. I did get slightly frustrated at her always sticking up for Gabe and trying to portray him as a different person to people who clearly know him very well, but understood that it came more from a place of guilt and longing to fit in.
I was glad that Gabe’s family could be honest about who he was and that Nora’s friends were being upfront with her about their thoughts on the relationship. It was refreshing to see the honesty about their personalities and it helped to highlight why they maybe weren’t the best match for each other. These characters also made the story, I love a story with a big family, the mix of personalities and the warmth that it brings to the story, especially when there is also the found family with Nora and her friends, it got a little emotional at times.
Nora’s story is also interspersed with her mother’s in the form of letters, that chart her adventures, her lost love and her life with Nora. I enjoyed these as Nora’s family are important to her so it was lovely to get a little extra insight into their life.
The one thing I did struggle with at times in this story was the miscommunication, now I can usually give a little leeway for a story because it is fiction after all, however, there was one aspect of the story that I found it tough not to get a little annoyed at Nora about. If you don’t like spoilers skip to the next paragraph…it pained me that Nora didn’t set them straight about the engagement, I could understand the first bit of confusion but when she started actively leaning into it I struggled, I know it provides a catalyst for Nora to confront her feelings but I couldn’t suspend my belief enough to accept that.
Luckily I was often distracted by how amazing Luca was with Nora and that helped to shift that little annoyance and had me hooked once again into the story. I struggled to put it down because I was enjoying it so much and did accidentally stay up very late one night just to fit in some more of the story.
Love at First Sight is just such a joyful book, it made me feel warm and happy, it has some wonderful characters and a gorgeous setting and is well worth a read.
A charity-working, dog-walking, child-wrangling, dust-ignoring bookworm, Jessica lives in the beautiful and historic city of York with one patient husband, one daughter, one very fluffy dog, two dog-loathing cats and a goldfish called Bob.
As day dreaming is her very favourite hobby and she loves a good happy-ever-after Jessica can’t believe she’s lucky enough to write romance for a living.
Reviews of other books by Jessica Gilmore
Love on the Island
everywhere-and-nowhere.com 
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