Reservations for Two by Hillary Manton Lodge

A culinary concoction of taking chances and finding love in the most delectable places
Food writer-turned-restaurateur Juliette D’Alisa has more than enough on her plate. While her trip to Provence might have unlocked new answers to her grandmother’s past, it’s also provided new complications in the form of Neil McLaren, the man she can’t give up.

Juliette and Neil find romance simple as they travel through Provence and Tuscany together, but life back home presents a different set of challenges. Juliette has a restaurant to open, a mother combating serious illness, and a family legacy of secrets to untangle – how does Neil, living so far away in Memphis, fit into to her life?

As she confronts an uncertain future, Juliette can’t help but wish that life could be as straightforward as her chocolate chip cookie recipe. Can her French grandmother’s letters from the 1940’s provide wisdom to guide her present? Or will every new insight create a fresh batch of mysteries?

Reservations for Two by Hillary Manton Lodge is the second novel in the Two Blue Doors trilogy, and it is just as enjoyable as the first. Picking up where the first novel left off, we find Juliette in Italy and France as she visits extended family and digs deeper into the mysteries left behind by her grandmother. Stumbling across her grandmother's letters during the 1940's while in Italy, the rest of the novel alternates between her grandmother life when she was young and Juliette's current circumstances. The novel also includes the wonderful recipes that Juliette and her family use at the end of every few chapters. I enjoyed seeing Italy and France through Juliette's eyes and through the eyes of a chef. One of my favorite parts of the book were the letters, which were interesting and ended in an ultimate cliffhanger. The characters of the novel were mostly the same as those seen in the first novel, and they continued to develop in Reservations for Two as well. I liked Adrian a whole lot more in this book than the other, and my feelings of affection for Juliette and Neil faded slightly in this book, but that is all I can reveal. I do hope that Juliette comes to trust more in God than she does in this novel, especially considering everything happening in her life. I also was not a huge fan of how the last few chapters played, so I am very interested to see how the final book resolves the issues raised at the end. Overall, I enjoyed this novel, and I look forward to the next installment!

I received this novel from Blogging for Books in exchange for an honest review.