{"id":7326,"date":"2026-09-20T04:31:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-20T04:31:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=7326"},"modified":"2026-09-20T04:31:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-20T04:31:08","slug":"a-study-in-sparkling-by-jodi-mcalister","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=7326","title":{"rendered":"A Study in Sparkling by Jodi McAlister"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is a quiet Tuesday that has turned busy without warning. A small wine bar in Hobart is short one staff member, every table is full, and a nervous junior sommelier is carrying too many glasses. They hit the floor. She bursts into tears. For a second the whole room stops, the owner included, standing behind the bar with a bottle in one hand and a wine knife in the other. Only one person moves: a regular, a married mother of three, who is already steering the girl out the back and asking where the mop lives. A Study in Sparkling by Jodi McAlister<\/strong> begins with the owner falling in love at that exact moment, and then spends three hundred pages asking what it would take for her to notice.<\/p>\n

The Night the Glasses Fell<\/h2>\n

The owner is Satoshi Tsukamoto, twenty-seven, bleached hair and bright spectacle frames, the son of a Japanese winemaker who dragged his family around the world\u2019s vineyards before settling in Tasmania. His bar is called Tsundoku, after the Japanese word<\/a> for buying books and letting them pile up unread, and its shelves are full of them.<\/p>\n

The regular is Fiona Fisher-Sinclair, a copywriter in her mid-thirties. That same night, her husband tells her he has had another partner and two more children in Melbourne for the whole of their marriage, and that he is leaving. She ends up back at the bar late that night, shaking, in mismatched sneakers, and Satoshi walks her home before dawn.<\/p>\n

A Study in Sparkling by Jodi McAlister<\/strong> then skips forward a year. The divorce is grinding through mediation, the school parents treat Fiona as a cautionary tale, and Satoshi has spent twelve months carrying a feeling he has decided she must never see.<\/p>\n

The setting is a pleasure in its own right: the Bellerive high street, the Coal River Valley vineyard where Satoshi\u2019s brother makes the family wine, the Sydney to Hobart yachts coming in over Christmas. Australian readers will recognise the texture, and everyone else gets a small, affectionate tour of Tasmania.<\/p>\n

What Jodi McAlister Knows About Wine<\/h2>\n

This is the companion to McAlister\u2019s earlier romance, and a reading group does not need to have read it. Fiona\u2019s younger brother Jonah and his wife Sadie, the leads of that first book, are here as supporting cast.<\/p>\n

What a group will notice first is the expertise. McAlister spent time in formal wine study for this book and it shows: in the blind tastings, the rules of the Master Sommelier exam, the choreography of decanting over a candle or opening sparkling without a sound. Each chapter carries a short tasting note at the top, a playful device that also works as a mood ring. None of it reads as showing off. The wine is how these two people talk to each other before they are ready to say anything else.<\/p>\n

Two Families, Two Kinds of Pressure<\/h2>\n

A Study in Sparkling by Jodi McAlister<\/strong> is really about people who have been underestimated by the people who raised them. Fiona grew up the only child without a doctorate in a family of academics, and her father still speaks to her as if she were a failing undergraduate. Satoshi grew up with anxiety and a controlling older brother who has never stopped treating him as breakable.<\/p>\n

Their arrangement begins after a bruising day in mediation, as a secret friends-with-benefits deal on Thursday nights while Jonah and Sadie mind the kids. It is warm, funny and extremely explicit, with plenty of open-door scenes. Readers who prefer the door closed should know that going in.<\/p>\n

Satoshi\u2019s half of the story is quieter and, in some ways, sadder. He is studying for an exam with a pass rate in single figures while running a bar whose only other qualified sommelier is rarely able to turn up, and he cannot bring himself to let her go. His brother Isamu appears at the bar on flimsy excuses and hovers. Satoshi agrees to keep the relationship secret because Fiona asks him to, and the novel is careful to show what that costs a man who has had to come out over and over and does not enjoy hiding anything.<\/p>\n

Fiona, meanwhile, is quietly building something of her own. She enters a competition for new wine writers with a profile of Satoshi\u2019s family vineyard, and her progress from anxious amateur to paid columnist is one of the most satisfying threads in the book. It gives her a victory that belongs to nobody else.<\/p>\n

Where A Study in Sparkling Loses Its Fizz<\/h2>\n

A Study in Sparkling by Jodi McAlister<\/strong> is a generous book, but it falters in a few ways.<\/p>\n

The middle stalls.<\/strong> A long section told through texts and emails is charming but slow.
\nFiona\u2019s guilt repeats.<\/strong> She apologises so often that the pattern stops telling us anything new.
\nThe last obstacle is avoidable.<\/strong> It hinges on a question about children that Fiona is too frightened to ask aloud.<\/p>\n

Questions Worth Arguing About<\/h2>\n

Start with Lex, Fiona\u2019s twelve-year-old, who is non-binary and far more clear-eyed about their father than any adult in the book. Ask the group whether Fiona is protecting her children by keeping her new relationship secret, or protecting herself, and whether Lex ends up parenting her in places.<\/p>\n

Then ask about the age gap. A Study in Sparkling by Jodi McAlister<\/strong> has a heroine in her mid-thirties who worries she is too old for a man eight years younger. Ask whether the novel takes that worry seriously or treats it as something to be talked out of, and whether the reaction would be different if the genders were reversed.<\/p>\n

Finally, ask about help. Almost everyone in this book is trying to rescue someone else, from Fiona\u2019s brothers to Satoshi\u2019s brother to Satoshi himself. Ask the table whether letting people help you is a weakness, a kindness or a skill that has to be learned.<\/p>\n

For more in this vein, An Academic Affair<\/a> is the natural starting point, with Jonah and Sadie as rival scholars. Part of Your World<\/a> by Abby Jimenez, which Fiona herself reads in these pages, pairs an older woman with a younger man. Yours Truly<\/a> suits a group interested in a recently divorced heroine and a hero managing anxiety. And The Fall Affair<\/a> by Vi Keeland offers another fresh start with a vineyard attached.<\/p>\n

Final Thoughts<\/h2>\n

A Study in Sparkling by Jodi McAlister<\/strong> takes a familiar premise, the lonely divorcee and the kind younger man, and gives it real texture: a specific city, a specific trade, and children who feel like actual children rather than plot devices. It is longer than it needs to be and its final conflict is thin. Yet it is also generous about second chances in a way that suits a reading group, and it ends where good romances should, with two people raising a glass and meaning it.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is a quiet Tuesday that has turned busy without warning. A small wine bar in Hobart is short one staff member, every table is full, and a nervous junior sommelier is carrying too many glasses. They hit the floor. She bursts into tears. For a second the whole room stops, the owner included, standing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bookreviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7326"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7326\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}