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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
beautiful, bittersweet story of midwestern love,
By A Customer
This review is from: Midnight Champagne (Hardcover)
A.Manette Ansay has a gift for character development and description. She provides just the right amount of both to keep the reader engaged and involved but not overburdened. Like RIVER ANGEL, MIDNIGHT CHAMPAGNE deals with slightly quirky, yet believeable Midwesterners from a small town. April is an individualist with an altruistic bent. Caleb is just sweet and loveable in a goofy sort of way. Their families and friends are basically simple folk just trying to deal with everyday life and love.The message of love flows throughout the book--it's not always beautiful and glossy. It can be cruel, murderous and frightening at times. It can kill but it can heal, too. As with RIVER ANGEL, there is a wistful, bittersweet quality to this book. I was hooked after the first page and really didn't want it to end. Another winner for A.Manette Ansay!
24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A toast to A. Manette Ansay...,
By
This review is from: Midnight Champagne: A Novel: A Novel (Paperback)
Attention all Vinegar Hill haters: Midnight Champagne will change your mind! Now, I am one that loved Vinegar Hill but know lots of people who didn't. This time around, A. Manette Ansay has written a less depressing and more indulgent story. It takes place in the course of one day with lots of characters that each get a turn to speak. So I beg those who have put off reading anything else by Ansay to read Midnight Champagne and give her a chance to redeem herself. You won't be disappointed.After three months of dating, 22-year-old April Leisgang and Caleb Shannon are getting married. Most of the family is against this marriage and especially the place where it's held - the nondenominational Great Lakes Chapel and Hideaway Lodge. Formally a notorious dance hall, roadhouse and brothel, it is rumored to be haunted by the mistress of the house, Greta Flame, who was murdered by one of her lovers back in its heyday. Such sets the stage for an unforgettable, eerie, and life-changing celebration.... The novel takes us from ceremony and reception through dinner and dance and ends with bouquet toss and midnight champagne. Written through the eyes of various characters, we get the opportunity to know the feelings, thoughts and goings-on of parents, grandparents, cousins, children and hotel staff. In doing so, I believe A. Manette Ansay has created the whole picture, a testimony of the love, pain, disappointments, hopes, and secrets felt, endured and kept hidden by the family and intensified by the union of April and Caleb and frequent visits to the cash bar. Readers are everywhere at once, witnesses to this spectacular party, omniscient flies on the wall. Midnight Champagne holds a goodie bag of emotions within its pages, a delicious and intoxicating mix, a declaration of the course of marriage and the many side roads it can take. Like listening to stories around a campfire: passionate and revealing, exciting and anxious, haunting and uninhibited. Much better than Vinegar Hill and certainly places A. Manette Ansay at the top of my reading list. Wonderful!
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Raise your glass to A. Manette Ansay.,
By Caro (Newark, Notts United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Midnight Champagne: A Novel: A Novel (Paperback)
Members of my reading group recommended this, my first A. Manette Ansay book and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I was reminded of one of those 'fly on the wall' documentaries that are so popular at the moment. I was able to sit in, watching and listening to a whole cast of characters as they interacted (or didn't), from ceremony and reception, through to the bouquet toss and midnight champagne. Better still, I was even privy to their individual thoughts and dreams. The blurb on my book cover, talks of two stories, April and Caleb's wedding and the Hideaway Lodge quarrel, intersecting, but I felt there were dozens of stories weaving in and out of each other and culminating in what I thought was the perfect champagne toast. The characters are beautifully drawn and I defy anyone not to find at least one they recognise from their own family. From the opening page, I was drawn into a world so real, I could swear I was there, in my glad rags, enjoying the wedding myself.
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