I was intrigued by this literary fiction novel, yet somehow it just fell flat to me. It was confusing to follow as the chapters kept bouncing around narrators (four protagonists is a lot, you know) and it all just got jumbled in my head more than once. I didn't really see a big plot or conflict; it just seemed like day-in-the-life snippets. It just felt boring and I was very much waiting to reach the last page. Writing is fine, and it does take an extraordinary amount of time and effort to write a novel -- especially with multiple protagonists and so I can appreciate that. It's just when it came to the story itself, it did not hit for me personally.

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This read was rich and I took my time with it as one would with a nice glass of wine.

Four strangers meet at the private home and vineyard of a Master Sommelier with the promise of being the first and only to taste one of the oldest wines left in the world. A week of debauchery ensues and everyone leaves seemingly changed forever.

I thoroughly enjoyed this read. The interactions between these people brought together with little in common outside of wine was shall I say, indulgent. Everything is written in a way that you somehow intimately know. Beauty, drunkenness, disgust, disdain, jealousy, forgiveness. I didn’t know where any of this was going and honestly I didn’t care. I found myself jotting down a sentence here or there just because it was so wonderfully expressed. I can tell time and heart went into drafting this read and I learned a thing or two about this community as well as wine itself.

Lush will be available May 27th and I’d like to thank Netgalley, Bloomsbury Publishing, and Rochelle Dowden-Lord for this ARC in exchange for an honest unbiased review. This was such a ride! I look forward to seeing what this author does next.

Rochelle Dowden-Lord’s Lush follows four wine-enthusiasts — a Master Sommelier, a new world producer, a food critic, and a wine influencer — who go to the french countryside to taste one of the oldest bottles in the world. Lush is as languid as a summer’s day and filled with luxurious descriptions of wine that are approachable to all readers, even those who have no taste for drinking. The novel is slow, but heavy on atmosphere. As most of the protagonists are intoxicated for the majority of the novel, the prose is loose and hazy. Vibes reign over plot or character development and the book always chooses beauty over clarity when the two are put at odds.

That said, the novel is immersive and gripping, perfect for readers who are looking to escape and maybe also learn a thing or two about wine.