{Review & Giveaway} The Winters by Lisa Gabriele (@lisagabrieletv @PenguinBooks)

Some secrets never stay buried.

After a whirlwind romance, a young woman returns to the opulent, secluded Long Island mansion of her new fiancé Max Winter—a wealthy politician and recent widower—and a life of luxury she’s never known. But all is not as it appears at the Asherley estate. The house is steeped in the memory of Max’s beautiful first wife Rebekah, who haunts the young woman’s imagination and feeds her uncertainties, while his very alive teenage daughter Dani makes her life a living hell. She soon realizes there is no clear place for her in this twisted little family: Max and Dani circle each other like cats, a dynamic that both repels and fascinates her, and he harbors political ambitions with which he will allow no woman—alive or dead—to interfere.

As the soon-to-be second Mrs. Winter grows more in love with Max, and more afraid of Dani, she is drawn deeper into the family’s dark secrets—the kind of secrets that could kill her, too. The Winters is a riveting story about what happens when a family’s ghosts resurface and threaten to upend everything.

​Somewhere of the coast of the Cayman Islands, a young girl pilots a boat into the open ocean to escape the endless drudgery of her life. The death of her father left her with nothing, but she swore that she would never become like some of the other young women she would see lounging about the club.  They were beautiful yet hollow shells after sacrificing what they once held so dear to be with a wealthy older man. That would never be her.  Never – until Max Winter.

Hard to believe it had been less than a year since I’d met Max Winter, a man whose love seized me by the shoulders and shook me out of a state of dormancy, and who ushered in another emotion I had yet to meet in my young life: jealousy, the kind that grows like kudzu, vining around the heart, squeezing all the air out, fusing with my thoughts and dreams, so that by the time I understood what was happening to me it was almost too late.
 

​​Max Winter is American royalty. He’s gorgeous, wealthy and full of secrets.  Falling in love with a girl so young was never part of his plan.  Maybe it was her innocence or maybe it was her determination to never let the world break her.  Whatever magic it was that she unknowingly wielded, he was completely under her spell.
 
There are things in his life that are better left forgotten and circumstances that would damage their newfound love beyond repair. And chief among them is a teenage daughter who refuses to move on after the tragic death of her mother. 
 
Being swept away from her meager life in the Caymans to the old-world grandeur of Asherley should have been a dream come true.  But there are ghosts around every dark corner, and she is running out of time to discover exactly who is the protector and who is the monster. 

If Laureen could see me holding court at the end of this polished table, so shiny the whites of my eyes reflected on its surface, what would she say? Would she note how comfortable I looked, surrounded by clippings from bridal magazines, a cup of coffee cooling on a place mat? Or would she say I looked like a fraudulent wannabe, a sorry substitute for the stylish Rebekah? She’s nothing but a scrubby beach urchin, she’d say. Not one person of her own to invite to her wedding. That says something about a person, doesn’t it? That she has nobody but Max. When a woman only has a man to count on, she’s taken a very wrong turn in her life.

​The Winters is a mystery unlike any other that I’ve ever read.  I think it’s because of the heroine herself.  Her name is never mentioned once and it makes her an enigma all on her own.  What is revealed is that despite being young and unworldly, she has an incredible strength about her.  She’s steadfast in her independence and yet still compassionate when dealing with Max’s daughter, Dani. 
 
Lisa’s rich prose gives the story a uniquely ethereal quality. A dreamlike feel permeates every page and makes the ending that much more startling. Parts of the mystery are evident while others caught me completely off guard.  And I was thoroughly entertained all along the way…

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