Sometimes a holiday brings magic and clarity…

Synopsis

Three women meet on holiday in Kefalonia. Each is secretly filled with turmoil.

Stella must decide on whether her twenty-year affair with Anton has reached the end.

Melody must find a way to go back to the love she knows she has with Luke.

Eliana must overcome her own complicated relationship with love to find harmony with Dean. 

Against the backdrop of the beautiful Miramare resort, the women quickly build a friendship and share their stories and deepest secrets, subconsciously guided by the magic of the Ionian Island.

With azure seas and clear blue skies, the women, and their partners, must find a way to nurture themselves before they can salvage their own relationships while navigating their attitudes to love. But can they find their way to a kinder, better place within themselves.

The Greeks have so many words for love, that they are guided and find a way through their own turmoil, to find the real happiness, love, and magic that exists within us all.

Follow strong, authentic female characters who have drive, sass, and attitude in this  poetic narrative with a stunningly slow simmer. It’s a story that will capture your heart. Disappear into a world of love. Into The Magic of Miramare.

My review

Miramare Resort has been welcoming many guests and holiday – comers in Kefalonia. When Stella arrives at the resort, she is at a crossroad: as she is having an affair for over twenty years with Anton, has it run its course? Or is there still a future on the table? At the resort she befriends two couples, that are having their own challenges. There are Melody and Luke, whose relationship is a truly strained one. The past has affected their present but how will it affect their future? And Eliana and Dean may love each other passionately, yet that doesn’t mean that everything is going all that great between them… Their shared holiday is a moment to think about relationships, love and the future. Friendships are being born, stories and secrets are being shared while enjoying the beauty of Kefalonia. And  with perhaps a little bit of magic, this will turn out to be a holiday like no other…

I have said it before, that visiting Greece is on my bucket list. And no, I still haven’t ticked it off, so for now I will explore this beautiful country through books and beautiful stories. So I was ready to be taken away to Kefalonia!

The story centers around Stella, Melody and Eliana, with Stella taking the main lead and we see a lot through her eyes.

Now, Stella’s story was one that took me while to warm to. Because Stella is in a relationship, if we can call that, with an unavailable man. And it’s not just a recent thing, but it lasting for twenty years. I can understand the excitement and lust of it. But twenty years? That it a long time to play second fiddle and always being the understanding person, being the woman ‘on the side’, easily cast away by Anton whenever it suits him best.

Even now, when Anton should be going on this holiday with her, Stella finds herself on her own on her arrival at the Miramare Resort. And while her situation is one of her own choice, I couldn’t not feel sorry for her. It must feel terrible to be ditched by your ‘partner’ again, while it should have been a lovely time.

So I was happy for her to befriend two other couples in this story, because Stella for sure needs someone in her corner, to find her own voice again, as she for sure needs to find herself again. And meeting new people can perhaps also give her the right inspiration for her new book she needs to write.

I liked it to see how Stella befriends people that are all so different from not only herself, but also between themselves.

There is Melody and Luke. And perhaps they were the couple that worried me the most, as there appear to be may red flags, yet it’s still enigmatic of what truly is going on with the pair, and what has occurred to them in the past.

It is perhaps easy to judge and condemn one character in their storyline, and for sure I don’t try to justify the facts, but we also need to understand the person behind the act. And what has turned them into such a person. And there is also the matter that sometimes we do things that are out of character, because of a something missing…

Eliana and Dean were perhaps the funniest couple, intentional or not. Because while the love for sure is palpable between them, Dean for sure is a character. He may be apparently only thinking about one thing, and also saying things at the most inappropriate moments. Yet the love between them, behind all the banter, feels so real, genuine…

In this book we see that not one relationship is as straight – forward as may seem on the outside. We never know what happens behind closed doors.

And we also see that friendships can be found in the strangest places. And that even holidays – friendships, which always seem to have an expiration date, can stand the test of time.

I liked to see how there seems to be something magical, mystical about the Miramare resort. It’s not a Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo thing, which made me very happy. Yet there is just *something* that makes all the characters rethink about past choices and think about their future, perhaps even finding the courage and inspiration to make difficult choices and decisions about their future. That Miramare – sparkle ignites something in the characters, and that was lovely to see.

After reaching the end of the book, I was happy with the course of this book, showing us that taking a step away from the comfort of our lives can be the incentive we need to make a change. And that a step away can open our eyes, see things how they are for real. And that a step away can bring us things and people in our lives that we didn’t know we needed.