Eight Hundred Grapes by Laura Dave

My husband and I have been talking about going out to Napa Valley for a *long* time, it is definitely on the bucket list, but I am now adding Sonoma County to that list, I blame this book.  And while the setting was a favorite part of this book, I loved the characters just as much.  They were flawed and complex and wonderful. 

I listened to the audiobook, which was narrated to perfection, and I got to the last disk and had to drive around my neighborhood at 9:30 at night because I just couldn't stop listening...it is that good.  Also, fair warning, you can't read this book without wanting a lovely, full bodied glass of red.

Book Description via Amazon

Named “Best Book of the Summer” by Glamour * Marie Claire * US Weekly * Good Housekeeping * Cosmopolitan * Elle Magazine * Wine Enthusiast * Health Magazine * Metro New York * InStyle* Pop Sugar * CBS Local * BookTrib * AV Club * and as the #1 Library Reads Pick *

There are secrets you share, and secrets you hide….

Growing up on her family’s Sonoma vineyard, Georgia Ford learned some important secrets. The secret number of grapes it takes to make a bottle of wine: eight hundred. The secret ingredient in her mother’s lasagna: chocolate. The secret behind ending a fight: hold hands.

But just a week before her wedding, thirty-year-old Georgia discovers her beloved fiancé has been keeping a secret so explosive, it will change their lives forever.

Georgia does what she’s always done: she returns to the family vineyard, expecting the comfort of her long-married parents, and her brothers, and everything familiar. But it turns out her fiancé is not the only one who’s been keeping secrets….

Bestselling author Laura Dave has been dubbed “a wry observer of modern love” (USA TODAY), a “decadent storyteller” (Marie Claire), and “compulsively readable” (Woman’s Day). Set in the lush backdrop of Sonoma’s wine country, Eight Hundred Grapes is a heartbreaking, funny, and deeply evocative novel about love, marriage, family, wine, and the treacherous terrain in which they all intersect.

In this breakout novel from an author who “positively shines with wisdom and intelligence” (Jonathan Tropper, This Is Where I leave You), Laura Dave “writes with humor and insight about relationships in all their complexity, whether she's describing siblings or fiancés or a couple long-married. Eight Hundred Grapes is a captivating story about the power of family, the limitations of love, and what becomes of a life’s work” (J. Courtney Sullivan, Maine).