Sweet Home Alabarden Park by T.J. O’Shea

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I purchased this book from Kobo as soon as it came out. Then I saw not fantastic reviews and kept passing it by. Now, I’ve mostly loved O’Shea’s other novels and have reread/relistened to them several times already – except The Order which I just read once but do have the audiobook. (Libro.fm has them all. And they’re not Amazon. And you OWN and can easily DOWNLOAD your audiobooks. If you use the code “Switch” when you sign up, you’ll get two free books instead of one. I’ll never go back to Audible. Here’s my referral code if you wanna help a sister out: Libro.fm) As a matter of fact, I just dropped the audiobook for Sweet Home Alabarden Park into my cart and am tempted to listen now…

Here’s the blurb:

Fiona Turner is about to face two, equally impossible repair a deteriorating, centuries-old estate in time to host the Queen of England, and turn an all-American farmer into a proper English duchess.

Fresh off a painful divorce, Fiona seizes the opportunity to renovate Alabarden Park and assist its new duchess, Alice Stewart—an effervescent, unpretentious American whose open attraction to Fiona intrigues and unsettles her. As their mutual feelings grow stronger, the professional distance Fiona put between them begins to crumble.

Now, Fiona is faced with two new, equally impossible keep Alice out of her battered, broken heart, or risk everything and let her in.

This is a beautiful, very slow burn romance. It’s technically a “fish out of water” trope but Alice is so charming and curious and awesome – maybe a little too perfect but I didn’t think so until I started typing that sentence – that she never seemed out of place. Yes, her accent and colloquialisms could be a lot, but I didn’t mind at all. I loved the way Alice handled her new life as a duchess and how she brought the manor house and the staff together. I laughed so hard over Fiona’s first exposure to “family breakfast.”

There were just so many great scenes in this book. And loads of wonderful characters. I’m pretty sure this is my new favorite of the author’s books. Sorry To Be With You. I’ll always love you, but Alice and Fiona have stolen my heart.

We stay with Fiona’s POV for the entire book and, while I sometimes wished we’d gotten a bit more inside Alice’s head, O’Shea did a great job making sure we knew where Alice was mentally through Fiona’s observations. Fiona’s growth was a huge theme in the book and the length of the book allowed us to really watch her learn about herself and to trust herself and to feel what she needs to feel.

There’s a lot more I could say but those things are mostly spoilers, and I don’t want to ruin even a tiny bit of this lovely romance.





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