Eight Hundred Grapes
A Novel
Book - 2015
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From Library Staff
From Library Staff
Eight Hundred Grapes is a story about relationships – with spouses, fiancées, family, self, and home. It's about being certain you've made the right and best choices for your life. When that certainty suddenly gets shaky, what do you do next?
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SPL_Robyn
Aug 10, 2015
If ever a book was written to be turned into a movie, Eight Hundred Grapes is it. It’s got the setting (California’s Sonoma Valley), it’s got the subject (wine, appealing to the foodie in everyone), it’s got a runaway-bride heroine searching for herself (I see Rachel McAdams), a somewhat dysfunctional family, and both a hunky British suitor and an adorkable local match. And a few movie stars already in the mix. This is the next Under the Tuscan Sun, with slightly younger characters.
It starts when the runaway bride, Georgia, discovers an unfathomable secret about her fiancée, a week before their wedding and trans-Atlantic move to London. Shocked to the core, Georgia runs to the only place she can think of, her childhood home. But the shocks just keep coming – her brothers are feuding, her parents separated and the vineyard has been sold to a faceless corporation.
With her entire world upside-down, Georgia struggles to fix it, and makes things inevitably worse before they get better. Along the way the author takes readers back in time and into the lives of the other characters, drawing them with nearly as much depth. This makes it easy to see why Georgia cannot simply resolve everyone’s problems; everyone has their own private history, histories they have not necessarily shared with her completely.
And that is the way life is – complex, multi-layered, at times funny and at times cringeworthily messy. It all makes Eight Hundred Grapes a summery novel to savor (perhaps with a glass of California red).
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Great story of a very flawed family and thei family-owned vineyard. About working hard to make love win out.
This was a easy read, but mediocre story.... very predictable
Nothing seemed to happen ...even though lots of stuff started the book as would be shockers !
Georgia Ford, while attempting to run away from her upcoming nuptials after discovering her fiance has been hiding things from her, returns home to discover her family isn't exactly the way she left it. Her family has been keeping secrets from her, secrets that can tear them apart. As Georgia tries to find her footing again and understand everything that has changed, she tries to connect to her Sonoma County roots, and her family's wine making.
I was honestly hoping for more from this book. It is about family and secrets, and how sometimes those secrets can tear people apart. I really wanted to like it, but I just felt it was missing something.
A sparkling novel that hooked me on the first page. I fell in love with the family and the settings. A book to read on a warm summer night when you have hours ahead of you.
This is a highly enjoyable book to read on a lazy rainy day or while basking in the sun with a glass of Merlot. I thoroughly enjoyed being brought into the picturesque vineyards in California.
The author's melange of scientific insight into the wine making process complemented the lighthearted tale of romance and family. With a few twists along way, this quick paced story is hard to put down.
Pour yourself a glass of wine and enjoy Georgia's adventure of making difficult decisions for the future and coming face-to-face with her past.
It's a quick read with a few twists. I'm sure you'll like it!
Set in California's beautiful wine country, EIGHT HUNDRED GRAPES is a light diversion - perfect for a lazy day or when you're in between "heavier" books.
A good book to bring to the pool or to read on a weekend when you want something light while you sip some wine and relax.
I was provided an Advance Reader Copy of his book by Simon & Schuster for an honest review.
Georgia Ford shows up in her home in Sebastopol, California, after seeing her fiancé with another woman and a young child. She’s expecting her family to know how to help, to ground her and help her figure out how to move forward. However, each member of her family is already each having their own problems. To top off the multitude of issues in the Ford family, Georgia’s parents have decided to sell The Last Straw vineyard — where the children grew up, where their father became a well-known and successful winemaker. Georgia and the rest of the Fords need to figure out what they want in order to put their lives back into motion…but sometimes synchronicity is not so easy to find.
This book was a fictional look at reality — life is not always pretty and decisions are not always easy to make. Georgia alway wants control and tries to fix other people’s problems before tackling her own, which makes her a somewhat unlikeable character until she decides to start working on herself. There are some colorful characters: Jacob, the owner of the winery buying the Ford vineyard; Finn, one Georgia’s twin older brothers; and even Maddie, Ben’s daughter that he just met. “Eight Hundred Grapes” is a story of wine and the family who makes it — a story of how you should be careful of what you give up, because you might not end up with the ending you want.