If you loved Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, this is a must-read!

A full review on Strangers in the Night: A Novel of Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner written by bestselling author, Heather Webb

If you’ve been jonesing for another book with a Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo vibe, immersing yourself in Strangers in the Night A Novel of Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner by Heather Webb will take the edge off. To borrow language from Frank and Ava’s era, their relationship was a real barn-burner; fragile, unbreakable, booze-soaked, adulterous, impossible for either of them to walk away from. Webb’s style is particularly appealing, sprinkled with snippets of song lyrics and the rat-a-tat dialogue of the silver screen era: I locked onto a pair of vivid green eyes – Ava’s eyes – to find them already intent on mine. A flame flickered to life inside me. She sure was something. I sang as if the song was written for her, and it was, at least for tonight.

If I’d known what she would come to mean to me, maybe I would have done things differently. Maybe I would have tried to change. How often would I grasp at a time in a desperate attempt to hold it close, to rewind the clock to the moments I’d spent with her, only to find they had slipped through my fingers like water, leaving me nothing but memories? Happy days and terrible ones, and the chasm left by her absence. I had regrets – plenty of them – but loving her wasn’t one of them. Loving her was one of the things I’d done right, even if I hadn’t done it well.” If you’re looking to load up your beach bag with compelling and dishy stories, Strangers in the Night is an excellent place to start.