I missed the girls so much! Their friendship is goals fr.
Emma and Santo were a delight to read 🤌 The spice tho 🫨
I am so so excited for Jade's book, and ready with my cava!!

Thank you NetGalley for this arc in exchange for my review.

This was a super fun light hearted book featuring a forbidden romance, age gap and forced proximity.

I felt some of the plot was a bit rushed and could have been flushed out a bit more.

*spoilers*

I feel like the story fell flat, the plot was supposed to be the ex trying to get the FMC back but he tried once? And barely even at that. It could have been a bit flushed out.

I also feel the ending was very rushed for the “third break up act” and the friend betrayed Santo and the reason wasn’t really well explained.

I also feel like the LGBTQIA + was well represented in the friends and children but was slipped in for the FMC. I feel like this could have been built upon more. ADHD also felt added in just because and wasn’t mentioned until the very end.

Its your run of the mill romance novel. Noting extraordinary but it was very cute.
Loved a middle age plus size FMC. Really enjoyed the growth of her being on her own, doing it herself. The friends were all so cute.
The love interest was adorable. Single step-dad professor is the MC, I didn't know I needed.

I devoured this book

#MiddleAgeRomance with gap MMC 57/FMC 42
Professor/student
Both divorced; her 1x, him multiple

Set in Europe (Rome, Italy to be exact)

Emma has undiagnosed ADHD

This book is really character focused and narrows in on Emma’s journey and how it intertwines with Santo. I loved that it touched on the monotony of her marriage seggs, that she was very open to exploring her segguality, and her mental health. The student/teacher element made it fun and created a good level of drama.

Both the FMC and the MMC were lovely and felt like real people.

I feel like it could have been set anywhere and the story would have been similar, ultimately Rome was a nice backdrop to this novel.

This was completely standalone from the series it's in. I didn't even realise it was part of a series until about 80% of the way through. Personally I won't likely go back and read the first 2 books as they don't interest me. However, book 4 I'll keep an eye out for.

I liked the premise a lot but the story fell a bit short. I feel like maybe the pacing was a bit off. I think maybe the ex should have been introduced earlier and not at the 35-40% mark. It felt a little out of pocket. Sometimes information would also be added in that just felt unnatural and not adding to the progression of the story.

this was the first book i’ve read by this author and i really enjoyed it! i can’t wait to read more books by this author in the future to see which one i love more then the other!

This was an interesting story, because it is set in Europe with an American, middle aged heroine. I enjoyed this story of new beginnings and the romance was great.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

To be honest, I had not read the other books in this series. That being said, this book worked well as a standalone and would only be enhanced by reading the previous books in the series, although I did not feel like anything was lost by not doing so.

This book felt like empowerment. Emma, a woman in her 40's, is learning to move on post-divorce. She moves to Italy to study for an MBA program where she meets a man for a one night stand, who she later discovers will actually be in close contact with her throughout the book. Emma struggles with issues like accepting her age, loving her body, and navigating life in a foreign country, which I can relate to. Santo, the male main character, was such a sweetheart. He was patient, kind, charming, and really a sweet-talker. It was so fun to read about him flirting and engaging romantically with Emma. He read her cues and helped her navigate sexuality after a long term relationship with a dead bedroom.

I was kept intrigued by this book throughout. I especially enjoyed the age gap and professor x student aspects, which you would normally find in a book about younger adults versus ones in their 40's and 50's. There is also care taking and he falls first. And he sometimes speaks in Italian, which is delightful.

The friendships in this book were also very strong and lent to engaging world building. It was fun to compare the Emma of her MBA program, friend group, and with Santo, as they were all very different Emmas. Each of the relationships she built throughout the book with her fellow students, professors, family, and friends provided more information and background about her, which was really interesting.

This book was a quick, fun read, but it was spicy! There were several intimate scenes which may make some readers uncomfortable. I enjoyed this book ad the variety it provided to my TBR pile.

Another fun and hot installment in the Aged Like Fine Wine series. Meeting these interesting mature women and being a spectator to their self actualizing adventures in love has been such a treat! In this one we get our curvy, insecure heroine Emma to open herself up to a bunch of new possibilities and one hot older Italian. I really loved her growth and the spicy sweetness between the two of them. You’ve got to start this series!

Thank you to NetGalley and the author for my copy. These opinions are my own.

Santo is multiple times divorced and doesn’t have any interest in getting married again. He enjoys his career as a professor. His life is quiet, and he likes it that way. Emma is excited to start graduate classes. Now that her divorce is finalized, she is pursuing her desire to complete her graduate degree. She certainly didn’t expect to move to Italy and find love! The two of them shouldn’t be together but they can’t stop their attraction. Will they find love or will their attraction derail their futures?
I like how the author created two characters that have plenty of life experience that all seemed very real. Santo has made a series of life choices that have led him to being a professor. He really enjoys most of what the job entails. I thought his cat was a fun addition to the story. Emma seems like a real middle-aged woman. She struggles in school with feeling old but also wants to prove that she can do the work. There is a great little moment where Emma has to deal with how much she struggles to keep up with the fast pace and the workflow. I thought that was a really nice addition. There are a couple of people in this story that I ended up hating. I so wanted the author to give them their comeuppance. But I’m a little bloodthirsty.
This story has a lot of emotion in it. This is the story of two adults given a chance at an unlikely love. The story takes place in Italy. I will read more from this author in the future.

I really enjoyed Prosecco with my Professor. Liz Alden addresses some really interesting difficult topics; making peace with your past, letting your insecurities go and not ruin the present or future, and the idea that no matter what happens things will be ok. Santo and Emma are adorable mid life characters finding their way to happiness and success even if it's not linear.

I’m obsessed with this book so much!!
First thing, I love that this book brought up topics like body appearance/size. These are real life things that people go through and the author did an amazing job at portraying that in this book.

Overall, it was a quick and fun run read. I was hooked from the very beginning and could not put this down. The relationship between Emma and Santo was so cute and perfect. I love them so much:)

the dynamic and angst in this book was prefect! It was an easy read with more mature aged characters.
I would recommend!

This is my first time reading the author and it won't be the last. I liked reading about mature characters, Emma is a 42-year-old woman, divorced, who goes to Italy to study her MBA and reinvent herself. Santo is in his mid 50s and is an undergraduate and postgraduate professor, after he was as CFO in startups and STEM companies. Very good development of the characters and how the story is told, I loved traveling to Italy through the pages of the book and I remembered my time in the MBA. I also highlight Emma's group of friends and how they support each other and stay together. And Santo's cat is great that it was part of the story. This reading has been a great success, especially because I was looking for stories with protagonists over 40s. Highly recommended.

Thank you to NetGalley, the author and the publisher, for making a copy available to me in exchange for an honest review.

Prosecco with my professor was a fun, lighthearted romance featuring forbidden romance, forced proximity, and an age gap. When the main female character starts her masters in Rome, she doesn't expect her failed one night stand to end up being her neighbour or her professor. What ensues are several months of ignoring feelings, burning passion, and, finally, one night that turns into three, then four, then five, and so on. And then our main characters ex-husband comes around, and her relationship is forced into the open. No one knows what will happen next or why.

Ok, I read this very quickly on a train journey from Surrey to Yorkshire. In the beginning, I loved that we had a curvy FMC in her 40s and a silver fox MMC in his later fifties. I loved the elements of their relationships, especially at the beginning when they said they just wanted to be friends but couldn't stay away from each other. Santo, the MMC, worshipped the ground our FMC walked on, doing everything in his power to show her that she is smart, beautiful, and should be confident in the bedroom. His best friend was infuriating, but there is always one character we hate, and I believe the point was that we are meant to see him as envious of our main characters.

All in all, the story was good. In theory. However, the execution wasn't as good as I would have wanted it to be. For starters, one of the main selling points of the book was that the FMC's ex-husband comes around looking to get back with her, and Santo decides to show her how much better life can be. And there is an element of that. However, there wasn't enough of it to be as big a selling point in the marketing of the book. I think that the book itself needed far more angst for that specific element to work. The author included three or four LGBTQIA+ characters ranging from pansexual to non-binary. I loved this. I loved seeing sex confident people who go out and ask for what they want. I loved the open sex discussions and how elegantly the author slipped in the LGBTQIA+ characters. All this being said, I would have loved to see more from the sex scenes. When I read a romance, I want to read something that makes me put the book down, slap my hand over my mouth, giggle. I felt that the sex scenes were lacking an emotional element here and a depth I would have really loved our main characters to have explored.

And finally, representation. This is a difficult one because there were elements of representation in here that I loved and elements I really couldn't get behind. As mentioned above, I think that most of the LGBTQIA+ representation was done really well. However, our main character was pansexual(?) or Bi(?) and, as demonstarted by my confusion, this wasn't often talked about. It was kind of slipped in but not mentioned. I would have loved to see that be built on and see a woman who is now taking what she wants and owning who and what she likes sexually and romantically. Toward the end of the book, there was an ADHD diagnosis that I feel was slipped in for the sake of representation. There were so many opportunities to really build on the FMC and her ADHD. However, I don't think they were used properly, making the diagnosis look like a second thought.

All in all, this book was an 18+ romance perfect for people wanting to see more age gap romances where the characters are old enough that it is not a crime.

3 stars.

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5
Spice: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️

I really enjoyed this romance with mature main characters (40s/50s) which is set in Italy. The title sold me because I love anything to do with wine. I haven’t read the first three books in the series, but I didn’t feel like I missed any information. It was a well developed story especially considering it was under 250 pages. The main characters had some crazy chemistry and I appreciated some of the real life issues (body image, dealing with divorce, children, etc.) that were handled well.

I do wish the book was a bit longer and explained motivations behind certain side characters actions (I’m trying to be vague to avoid spoilers). I did read this in one sitting and it was the quickest I’ve read an ARC in a hot minute!! Overall, I really enjoyed it!

ARC review - Prosecco with my Professor by Liz Alden

This book centres on Emma and Santo, a mature student and her professor. Emma (42) is navigating life as a relatively recently divorced woman, with three older kids, and now studying abroad. Santo (56/7) is her sexy professor, trying to balance his attraction to Emma with his desire to keep his job and keep everything above board.

Things are a bit more difficult when they discover they will be living almost next door.

This is a funny, sexy, well written book. Santo may be an italian stallion, but he's also intelligent and caring as well as sexy and (semi-secretly) rich. He's dealing with football/soccer injuries because he isn't as young as he was, while getting guidance and advice from his former step-daughter. His friend, on the other hand, is a d*ck.

Emma is discovering the delights life can bring while also dealing with a lack of confidence and inexperience from her lackluster marriage and then divorce. Luckily, she has several good friends on hand to offer advice and pdfs of instructions!

I love that Santo has absolutely no hangups and can see the beauty in Emma's curves.

I'm considering reading it again some time. The intimate scenes are handled beautifully, showing sensuality rather than raunchiness. The characters feel real; they need to eat and use the bathroom, they wear ordinary clothes as well as sexy tailored numbers, they get ill as well as drinking prosecco in glorious surroundings.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It gets 4.5 stars from me.

Prosecco with my professor is available now from lizalden.com and will be released wider on April 30th. I got my copy free and voluntarily through Netgalley, and this review is entirely my own thoughts on the book

Such a great addition to the series! Can easily be read as a standalone.

I’ve been looking forward to Emma’s book and it did not disappoint. I really love this group of women and their friendship feels so genuine. This one had plenty of chemistry to go with the LOL moments I’ve come to expect from this author.

If you’re looking for a 40+ second chance at love read then this one’s for you. Everyone deserves an Italian holiday romance with a silver fox.

This is the first book I've read in the "Aged Like Fine Wine" series. The first two volumes certainly need to be recovered right away. The book is clearly a standalone, so reading the other volumes is not necessary, but at this point, why not?
I didn't expect such an enjoyable and smooth read, i was not sure about the plot, but I have to think again.
The protagonist is Emma, ​​who together with three of her friends, or rather best friends, finds herself in Rome, following a wine course. The protagonists are in their forties, so a little different from my usual readings, but I didn't mind it at all. It was interesting to read about "adult" protagonists, their problems and their approach to sexual life. Emma finds herself in a sort of love triangle, on one side there is her ex, and on the other the sexy professor for whom she feels a crazy attraction. The book is very short, compared to today's length of romances, in 250 pages there is a concentration of different tropes, perhaps a little too many? We have: the trope student vs professor, age gap, LGBTQIAP+, force proximity, no-binary. Maybe fewer tropes and a few more pages and the book would have been, at least in my opinion, 5 stars.

Thanks to Liz Alden and Netgalley for giving me the chance to read this book in adv.

This is the 3rd book in the Aged Like Fine Wine series and I really enjoyed it! This actually had two tropes that I dislike - age gap and power dynamics of professor/student but I thought the author did such a good job handling both scenarios! I usually steer clear of the age gap but I knew this author wouldn’t disappoint me and she didn’t!

This is the story of Emma, a 40-something divorcee who decides to switch things up and pursue her MBA in Italy after living in Texas her whole life. One of her first nights there, she has a one-night stand who turns out to be her professor!

I really enjoyed Emma’s journey and I loved how the protagonist is in her 40’s and trying to rebuild after kids and a divorce. I also really appreciated how sex positive this story was. This was very steamy at times but it fit the narrative well. It’s around 250 pages so a quick read and I recommend if you are looking for something sweet and spicy this summer! This could be read as a standalone but I recommend the entire series 🥂

Thank you to the author for an advanced copy.