Powerful Italian, Penniless Housekeeper by India Grey

India Grey might be one of my new favorite Harlequin authors. POWERFUL ITALIAN, PENNILESS HOUSEKEEPER might have a silly title but it's a beautiful story about feeling uncertain in your thirties and rediscovering your passions when life leaves you cold.

Sarah is the awkward, plain daughter in her blended family. Her half-sister, Angelia, is pretty and popular, and her wedding is making Sarah, as a single mom, feel like a miserable failure. These feelings are amplified when Angelica and her cruel friends decide to humiliate Sarah for sport at their bridal shower, forcing her to do a scavenger hunt, like finding an eligible bachelor and ordering a "screaming orgasm" from the bar, and basically just being total assholes.

That's how she meets Lorenzo, eligible bachelor and film director extraordinaire, who is less than impressed with the way that Sarah is being treated. They have an instant connection, but Sarah, because of her insecurities, sees him as a chivalrous Italian man just exerting his charm. She doesn't expect to see him again, so obviously she does.

The core conflict here is that we learn, early on, that Sarah is the daughter of the deceased author who wrote Lorenzo's favorite book; he hopes to make a film of it by getting the rights, but the owner of said rights (his daughter) rejects everyone on principle. By the time he realizes who she is, he's already half-fallen for her, and this makes his seduction of her sharp with guilt: is he only doing this to create the magnum opus he's always dreamed of? Or is Sarah the woman he's been searching for all his life?

The writing is exquisite and Sarah was such a well-done character. Loved a non-virgin single mother heroine in her thirties, and also loved that the hero had infertility that WASN'T miraculously cured in the epilogue (I was worried). This author has a knack for introducing tough subjects in this book and handling them sensitively, but I've been burned too many times. Apparently, I needn't have worried.

Cannot wait to read even more from this author.

4.5 out of 5 stars