JULIE IS NOT JUST A BAKER.....

ENJOY THE OPPORTUNITY TO READ HER NEW BOOKS, We are just offering you the first look. If you love her baking, you will really love the books!! A review of one of her latest:

Riley Calder Returns with Another Adriatic Escape

When Riley Calder sat down in a hotel room in Dubrovnik to write what would become Desire, Deception, and the Sea, the author was already familiar with the territory. Calder's first novel established a love for the Adriatic coast that readers immediately embraced. Now, with this second book, Calder returns to that world with even greater confidence and depth.

The result is a novel that does something increasingly rare in contemporary fiction: it refuses to be one thing. Part romance, part corporate thriller, part love letter to the Adriatic coast, Desire, Deception, and the Sea is the kind of book that arrives fully formed, confident, layered, and deeply satisfying.

What Happens When a Career-Driven Woman Arrives Somewhere She Never Expected to Stay

Scarlett Voss has spent a decade building a career in hotel management. She's worked every level of every department in four countries. She has an MBA completed part-time while managing a four-star in Geneva. She can read a property's problems "the way other people read weather, not by analysing every variable but by standing in it and knowing".

When she's offered the General Manager role at Azure Isle Resort, Helion Hospitality's most prestigious property, a private island off the coast of Montenegro with twenty-two ultra-luxury villas and a Michelin-starred dining experience, it's the job she's been working toward for the better part of a decade.

But Azure Isle has problems. Revenue is down fourteen percent year-on-year despite steady occupancy. The previous GM left suddenly. Three senior staff followed him out within a month. And the financial records don't add up.

Scarlett arrives expecting to fix what's broken and move on. What she doesn't expect is to find a place that changes her.

A Setting That Feels Like a Character

The Adriatic coast is not just a backdrop in this novel; it's a living presence. Calder spent time with fishermen along the Montenegrin coast, stood in a chef's kitchen in Korcula, and absorbed the particular quality of light that makes the Adriatic look like a memory. That authenticity runs through every page.

The island itself becomes a mirror for the characters. As Marco, the head bartender, tells Scarlett on her arrival: "My brother always says the island looks different depending on your mood when you arrive. He says it's like a mirror. It shows you back at yourself".

Scarlett, of course, isn't ready to hear this. When Marco asks what the island looks like to her, she replies, "Like work." It's a deflection, a professional reflex, and exactly the kind of answer someone gives when they're not yet ready to be known.

Two Men, Two Kinds of Love

Into Scarlett's carefully constructed world come two men, and Calder's handling of the love triangle is among the most honest you'll find in contemporary fiction.

Dominic Rayne has acquired forty percent of the resort. He's everything Scarlett isn't prepared for, observant, challenging, and utterly unimpressed by her defences. He's the kind of person who makes you want to be seen and also terrifies you with the prospect. When he looks at her, "the space between them had ceased to be an obstacle the moment he looked".

Luca Cavaletti runs the resort's most exclusive dining experience, The Velvet Room. His warmth is so immediate that Scarlett finds herself opening up before she's decided to. He's the kind of person who makes you feel known, completely, without agenda. His eyes are amber, "like good whisky held up to light," and when they find her, they "just looked. Open and direct and without any of the usual preliminary processing".

The chemistry between Scarlett and both men is electric. But what makes the triangle work is Calder's refusal to make it simple. There's no villain. No one is wrong for Scarlett. Instead, the novel asks: What happens when you love someone truly, and they love you truly, and that love is not the kind that builds a life together, but it is still real?

Beneath the Romance, a Thriller

Underneath the love story, there's a corporate thriller about financial fraud and institutional betrayal. Scarlett has been sent to Azure Isle with a secondary brief: to conduct a financial assessment that will justify a distressed acquisition.

What she finds instead is an active fraud. A shell company has been siphoning money from the resort's accounts for fourteen months, over four hundred thousand euros. The trail leads higher up the corporate ladder than anyone expected.

The investigation becomes the context in which Scarlett's relationships deepen. It exposes character: who is willing to look the other way, who is willing to fight, who is willing to sacrifice professional advancement for what's right.

Why It Works

What makes the novel cohere is its commitment to honesty. This is a book about people who are willing to be wrong, to be hurt, to be honest, and to keep showing up anyway.

Luca embodies this philosophy most fully. He is "constitutionally terrible at keeping things to himself." He makes no demands because he wants Scarlett to come to him freely, not out of obligation.

Dominic must learn honesty. He arrives guarded and strategic, and he has to unlearn those habits to be with Scarlett.

And Scarlett herself must learn to stop managing everything. She arrives on a boat called La Promessa, "The Promise", and by the novel's end, we understand what the title means. The promise, kept.

Who Should Read It

If you're tired of romance novels that make love look simple, read this. If you like thrillers that care about their characters, read this. If you want a book that transports you to another world and also makes you think, read this.

Desire, Deception, and the Sea is available now on Amazon Kindle. It's the kind of book that works on the beach and also in the quiet hours of a Sunday afternoon. It's the kind of book that stays with you.

AVAILABLE ON AMAZON!!!