How far would you go in the name of love?
Sarah Parsons has a choice ahead of her. After the trip of a lifetime she’s somehow returned home with TWO handsome men wanting to whisk her away into the sunset.
Pulled in two directions across the globe, it’s making life trickier than it sounds. Her gorgeous American Josh, wants to meet Sarah in Hawaii for a holiday to remember. Meanwhile silver fox … meet Sarah in Hawaii for a holiday to remember. Meanwhile silver fox James plans to wine and dine her in London.
It’s a lot to handle for this Aussie girl, who had totally sworn off men!
Join Sarah after her adventure in One Summer in Santorini, for the heart-warming and uplifting third novel in The Holiday Romance series.
Travel to beautiful destinations with old friends and new in this gorgeous romantic novel perfect for fans of Holly Martin and Sue Roberts.
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Which man will she choose?
Sarah traveled to Greece after a bad breakup with her boyfriend. She had no intentions of meeting a man, she just wanted to have fun and restart her life. But Sarah fell for two men during the trip. Josh, an American, who was younger and enjoyed having fun. James was a rich older man who lived in London and traveled the world for his job. Each man had so much to offer Sarah and she was having trouble deciding which one she wanted in her life.
This book was a real treat. It swept me away to exotic locations, London, Hawaii, Australia and New Zealand while telling Sarah’s story. As I was reading, I honestly couldn’t decide which man was right for Sarah. They each brought so much to her life. But as the story started to wind down and one man was chosen, I couldn’t have been any happier with Sarah’s choice.
When I started reading this book, I didn’t realize it was part of a series. The Greece trip is featured in a previous book. This book can be read as a stand-alone, but I would like to go back and read about everything that happened during the Greek vacation.
Here is another delightful novel from Sandy Barker, who once again blends romance with travel to fabulous locations into a story that keeps the reader guessing what is going to happen right up to the last chapter.
Sarah Parsons, who we first met in the author’s debut novel, Summer in Santorini, has a difficult decision to make. Having gone on a sailing holiday around Greece with no intention of getting into any romantic entanglements at all, she now has two very different suitors vying for her affections. James, is English, older than her, and a silver fox, while Josh is American, and younger. How can Sarah, who has feelings for both men, decide which is the man for her?
I thoroughly enjoyed finding out the answer to Sarah’s dilemma, while being whisked away to London, Hawaii, New Zealand and, of course, Sydney through the author’s wonderful descriptions of these locations – and their mouth-watering cuisine. What I particularly liked about the book was that while it was Sarah who had to decide who and what it was she really wanted, James’ and Josh’s characters and feelings were very much a part of her decision.
All in all, a perfect summer read.
Travel, food, clothes and some romance, with a little Sydney thrown in
3.5-4stars
After reading Sandy Barker’s That Night in Paris I was enthusiastic about travelling Down Under with Sarah, the older sister mentioned frequently in Cat’s romantic jaunt around Europe. I was surprised and a bit disappointed that Australia did not feature more prominently in this book. London, Hawaii and New Zealand’s South Island are great locations and Barker goes to some lengths to include sight-seeing with great dining and scenic excursions in all three. Sydney is Sarah’s home base and she does have some superb dates there with her two beaux but in view of the title I was expecting more of the book to be set in Australia.
I just finished a very emotion-packed novel before starting A Sunset in Sydney, so that influenced my take on this book. I felt it had lots of details about her travel, makeup, clothing and food choices, and it kept moving, but through most of the book it did not dig all that deep. Sarah acted much younger than her age and I did not like the way she dealt with her love triangle. The ubiquitous drinking was also a bit of a turnoff for me: just too excessive and it often took over and kept delaying the important discussions.
The last part of the novel was much better than the beginning and I liked the choices Sarah finally made. By the climax I was reassessing some of my negative impressions of Sarah for the better, but I preferred her sister’s story in That Night in Paris. I now wish I had read One Summer in Santorini, Sarah’s Greek holiday book that starts the series, before reading this one. Getting the fuller picture of Sarah, James and Josh’s backstory might have made Sarah a more sympathetic character and her indecision about the guys more understandable.
Thanks to publishers Harper Collins/One More Chapter and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of the book; this is my voluntary and honest review.
Wow, what a book! A Sunset in Sydney picks up the story of Sarah after she leaves her Greek holiday (One Summer in Santorini). I was anxiously waiting to read this third book in her Holiday Romance Series to find out what happened to Sarah, Josh and that silver British fox! But if you are reading the series out of order, you can read each book as a standalone too. Man, armchair travel is a serious thing! Nobody has been able to sweep me off to a distant land like Sandy Barker. After reading One Summer in Santorini I was looking up flights to Athens. After reading That Night in Paris, I was looking up European coach tours. While reading A Sunset in Sydney, I had a hankering for a tropical drink like Sarah has by the pool in Hawaii, and ended up making one in the middle of the day. Now, if that doesn’t say escapist read, I don’t know what does.
Okay, maybe it’s just me, but…
This book frustrated me! Had I been reading a paperback version of it, I would have thrown it across the room, then retrieved it and, in a fit, ripped it into a thousand tiny pieces. Fortunately, I was reading an eBook and throwing my phone across the room wouldn’t have been good for me — or the phone.
It isn’t the author who frustrates me. I’ve read three of Sandy Barker’s books and enjoyed them well enough.
The main character — Sarah Parsons — frustrated me. She was a hot mess. Allowing a past relationship gone bad to justify sleeping with two men at the same time. After all, if she settled for one of them, and it didn’t last, she would be alone again. So instead, she waffles between two men, hoping that she can hold their interest long enough to make them fall in love with her, so she might eventually have an enduring relationship and perhaps a family of her own.
First there’s Josh, the American she met while on a cruise ship in Greece ( covered in Barker’s “One Summer in Santorini.”) She thinks she’s in love with Josh and hopes that their planned meeting in Hawaii over the New Year’s holiday will help
her figure out not only how she feels, but how Josh feels. Because Josh is constantly sending mixed signals. They’re sleeping together and he’s acting like they are a couple one minute, but the next minute he’s introducing her as a friend. Josh is younger than she (she’s in her late 30s and labels him a millennial), and she uses that as an excuse for the reason why he might be afraid to commit to a real relationship.
Then there’s James, the British man she also met while in Greece. She labels James as a handsome ‘silver fox’. He’s in his early 50’s and an art dealer, He’s sophisticated and charming and worldly and is definitely smitten with Sarah. After Greece, she returns to England and spends a couple of days with him before returning back to her home in Sydney, Australia. Of course, she falls into bed with him, then freaks out a bit when he admits he’s falling in love with her, because she’s recently been with Josh.
She heads back to Australia and she goes back to her teaching job. Then its the end of the year and she’s flying to Hawaii to meet Josh for their planned vacation. She has a wonderful time and of course they sleep together. Still, she can’t discern his feelings about her, since he acts like they are friends one minute, but lovers the next. They have “the” serious conversation at the end of the trip, and Sarah admits to Josh that she wants something more, but he is still hesitant. So she spills the beans that she’s been seeing James too, which angers Josh. He asked her not to see James. (This irritated me too — does he really have the right to ask her not to see other guys when he doesn’t know if he wants a relationship with her?)
They leave each other and it appears that they’ve broken up. Sarah goes home and cries to all her friends about her breakup from Josh. But then James is back in the picture. He’s in Australia for business and would she like to go with him for a long weekend in New Zealand? She accepts even though she’s supposedly heartbroken over her breakup with Josh. When Josh texts her while she’s in New Zealand, she ignores his texts and sleeps with James. James obviously cares about her — wining and dining her, treating her very special, doing thoughtful little gestures for her. Sarah struggles with her feelings for James. Does she love him?
But Josh isn’t out of the picture yet.
And when James confesses why he broke up with his last girlfriend, Sarah realizes that she needs to make a major decision if she wants to stay with him.
I don’t want to spoil the story, so I won’t divulge much more of the storyline in this review. But it’s at this point that my frustration erupts. When someone is in love with a person, like Sarah professes to be, why is she unwilling to compromise even a little bit to be with that person? Relationships are all about compromise. And why does she keep pining for a man who isn’t sure he loves her and wants a permanent relationship with her?
I guess it’s human nature to want what we can’t have, but seeing the way Sarah let her life unfold just made me want to shake some sense into her!
Even though the main character irritated me because her actions sabotage her happiness, I thought the overall story was well written. Barker did a wonderful job describing some of the places where Sarah visited — Hawaii and New Zealand. Since the title mentions Sydney, I was hoping we would hear more about this lovely city. But other than some brief descriptions of a couple of famous landmarks, we really didn’t learn much about Sydney. Oh well, perhaps in a future book?
The only other thing I didn’t care for was the story’s ending. It ended too abruptly. Sarah made her decision, one of her two suitors made his decision, then there’s a quick epilogue where Sarah is on a ship with all of her favorite people for a 10-day sail along the Croatian coast. And it ends with them all trying a new cocktail. That’s it. No indication whether Sarah and her chosen guy are really in a long term relationship. It just felt like the story was incomplete. Perhaps Barker is planning another story to answer that question?
Thank you to #Netgalley and #HarperCollins Publishers for providing an ARC of this book.