Couldn't put it down. The characters draw you into their world immediatlely. Lance's cooking is true art...makes you wish you were there to join them in the meals. It has intrigue and mystery...I enjoyed it immensely.

In this book Rese Barrett is a painfully independent, proud woman with a lot of skeletons in her closet....some of which she doesn't even know exist. Rese, a very talented carpenter purchases an old home and renovates it by herself as she plans to have a bed and breakfast. She puts the help wanted sign out and within hours she has her first applicant, Lance Michelli, who has an agenda of his own and his share skeletons. The chemistry between Rese and Lance at first is tense at best as they both have wrong first impressions of each other. She hires him with much reluctance and before she knows it she is softening, saying things to him she'd never said to anyone before. At the same time Lance is trying to find what his Nonna Antonio sent him there for, however, he finds himself falling in love. Torn between keeping his Nonna happy and not hurting Rese, Lance has to decide who and what takes precedence in his life, all the while Rese is finding out who she really is inside and what really matters in life.

This is the first book I've ever read by Kristen Heitzmann and I wasn't disappointed. Even though I found her a talented writer I felt as though her characters lacked warmth. They didn't draw me in and make me feel as if I knew them personally as some other authors have done. However, I am planning on purchasing the sequel when it becomes available next summer.

Secrets is a romantic mystery between two people who seek truth, but flounder in secrets from the past and present. Lance Michelli has always been a rebel, but not the typical bad guy rebel.

With his motorcycle, long hair and earring, he looked the part, but his rebellions often resulted from trying to do the right thing without thinking of the consequences first. After the untimely death of his brother, Lance is determined to follow in his brother's footsteps by doing things the right way.

When Lance's grandmother falls ill, she begs him to finish something for her, but she can't communicate all that she needs to tell him. That leaves Lance traveling to Italy to look up an old relative who can shed some light on the thing Nonna needs Lance to do for her. The trip to Italy leads him to California to the cottage where his grandmother was raised and where Reece Barret has started renovations to turn it into a bed and breakfast.

After the death of her father, Reece pours everything she knows into the renovation of the cottage as a final tribute to her life with her father. When Lance appears on her doorstep looking for a job and able to do all the things Reece doesn't like to do, she hires him on the spot. Lance has a way of getting Reece to open up and talk about things she has never told anyone before.

Lance also heightens Reece's hunger for God by the way he lives and the things he talks about. Lance shares his faith and his Bible with her.

As she begins to trust him and seek God, Lance is learning more and more about his family's connection to the cottage, but he can't tell Reece for fear she will question his motives for befriending her. Lance knows he must come clean and convinces himself that he will once he put all the pieces together, but will Reece find out what he's up to before he has a chance to tell her?

From skeletons in the cellar and ghosts in the attack, Secrets is a page-turner from beginning to the end. And for those who crave romance, the electricity between Lance and Reece will keep you guessing.

This is the first book I have read by Ms. Heitzmann, and I'll surely be back for more. This story is not in my ususal genre, but I sure did like it. Heitzmann is a wonderful character crafter. This story really gets in deep under the skin and into the souls of the characters. It made me cry more than once. I was also impressed by her ability to describe scenery-I felt as though I was actually there.

The themes of this book are: trust in your abilities, trust in others, but above all, trust in the Lord. An amazing story with an amazing purpose.

Highly recommended.

Engaging, intriguing, well-written, and excellent character development; that's what I want to say first about this awesome story. Kristen Heitzmann really outdid herself in this book. She takes you back to Sonoma, California where a young woman named Rese Barrett, as tough as nails and as independent as any woman could be, is fixing up this lovely old villa she happened to buy on an auction. Little did she know that the man she hired was actually the orginial owner's great-great grandson, Lance Michelli. Lance arrives at Sonoma from the Bronx in New York City to fulfill the mission his nonna Antonia had sent him on. What he didn't expect was the secrets he unearthed beneath the carriage house and the tough yet vulnerable young woman who hired him to be a cook/maid for the bed and breakfast she planned to open in the old villa. As Rese begins telling secrets to Lance that no one had ever been able to discover from her, Lance realizes the longer he keeps the secrets he unearthed, the more of the chance Rese would not allow him a place at her villa...and in her heart. Great story. I'm so looking forward to reading the sequel "Unforgotten" which continues the contemporary story along with a dual time-line in 1931 when Antonia had lived in the villa. Great work, Kristen!