Review: Santorini Sunsets by Anita Hughes

Title: Santorini Sunsets
Author: Anita Hughes 
Format: Paperback
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Publish Date: August 2, 2016 
Source: Publisher

What's the Story?:

From Goodreads.com: "Brigit Palmer is thrilled to be on the Greek Island of Santorini. She's here for her wedding to Hollywood heart-throb Blake Crawford, one of America's most eligible bachelors. Brigit's parents have rented a villa, and soon guests will arrive from all over the world for the intimate ceremony.

Brigit is a New York socialite, and she's just given up her position at a Manhattan law firm to run her father's philanthropic foundation. Things are finally falling into place. Love, career, family. Everything is going so well...until she steps into the garden and sees her ex-husband Nathaniel hiding in the rose bushes.

Nathaniel, a failed novelist, announces that Blake sold the rights to the wedding to HELLO! Magazine for two million dollars (donated to charity), and he is the reporter assigned to write the story. Everyone expects Brigit to have her happily ever after, including her mother who taught her how to lead the perfect lifestyle, her younger sister Daisy who impatiently wishes for her own love story, and of course, her fiancé. Things are supposed to work out for them. But when Brigit discovers an unsettling secret about Blake, she questions everything she's ever believed about love, and wonders if she's better off alone."

My Two Cents:

"Santorini Sunsets" is the story of Brigit, a NYC society girl, who is about to marry Hollywood actor Blake. The setting is Santorini, Greece but even a gorgeous setting can't quell Brigit's mind about whether or not getting married again is the right thing to do. Things are even less sure after Brigit's ex-husband shows up hoping to get the scoop on Brigit's wedding for a tabloid. This book had an interesting premise but fell a little flat for me.

I was drawn in by the promise of an exotic setting. I have never been to Santorini but it is definitely on my bucket list. The author does a great job of capturing the allure of the city and its beauty. I liked living vicariously through the characters in that regard.

The characters really fell flat for me. You don't really get a lot of information on the motivations between the various players. It seemed like such a stretch that Brigit's ex would sink as low as coming to the wedding to take pictures for a tabloid and also that Brigit's fiancé would think that it would be totally okay for that to happen without telling his wife. I was looking for more of an explanation to understand why the characters would go to such lengths but that never came even with the author delving into a lot of telling rather than showing. The setting was indeed exotic but the execution did not work out the best.