BLOG TOUR - THE EXPAT AFFAIR BY KIMBERLY BELLE

 

USA Today bestselling author Kimberly Belle returns with an exhilarating new thriller about an American expat whose startling discovery plunges her into the glamorous but deadly world of Amsterdam’s diamond industry, and the one woman who may hold the answer. 

Title: The Expat Affair
Author: Kimberly Belle
Publisher: Harlequin Books
Release Date: 3rd June 2025

 
BLURB
Rayna Dumont is getting a fresh start in Amsterdam. Following a nasty divorce, she takes a jet-setting new job and embraces the single life. All seems to be going well until she wakes up in the bed of Xander van der Vos, her one-night stand from the night before, only to find him brutally murdered in the room next door. To make matters worse, millions of dollars’ worth of diamonds are missing from his safe. Quickly, Rayna becomes the prime suspect and is thrown into a deadly game of cat and mouse with forces beyond her wildest imagination.

From her lavish home in the heart of the city, Willow Prins is enraptured by the case. The wife of Thomas Prins, CEO of the House of Prins and Xander’s former boss, Willow is too familiar with what it’s like to be the outsider in the elite world of luxury goods. But as the House comes under scrutiny, tensions rise in her already strained marriage and Willow starts to wonder if Rayna might be the solution she’s been looking for.

As both women dive into the dark underbelly of the diamond industry, their hope for survival hinges on navigating a web of power and revenge. And as Rayna fights to clear her name, will she unravel the truth or find herself another victim? 

 

PURCHASE LINKS
Bookshop.org
B&N
Books A Million
Amazon

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

Kimberly Belle worked in marketing and nonprofit fundraising before turning to writing fiction. A graduate of Agnes Scott College, Kimberly lived for over a decade in the Netherlands and currently divides her time between Atlanta and Amsterdam. She is the bestselling author of over eight novels, including The Marriage Lie, Dear Wife, The Personal Assistant, and The Paris Widow. 

AUTHOR LINKS
Author website: https://www.kimberlybellebooks.com/
Facebook: @KimberlyBelleBooks
Twitter: @KimberlySBelle
Instagram: @kimberlybellebooks

 

EXCERPT 

Part One


“A diamond is forever.”

—Francis Gerety of N.W. Ayer & Son for De Beers


RAYNA

My eyes snap open on a jolt, and I blink into a room that’s as dark as a cave. For the first few blissful seconds, my body relaxes into a scene that feels all too familiar. The spicy scent of male on thousand-count sheets. The cushion of a criminally expensive mattress cradling my bones. A down-filled comforter skimming my naked skin like a lover.

And then I remember.

Not my bed. Not my home. Where the sheets were criminally soft but the bed cold and lonely, even though there were two people in it.

Correction: there were three people, though you better believe I didn’t know it at the time.

Stop. Abort. This is not the time to be thinking such things, when you find yourself in another man’s bed and when there’s definitely another woman in your old one. Fourteen months and a whole ocean between me and the ashes of my old life, and that man can still muscle his way into my head when I least want him there. Despite everything that brought me here, to a new life on the other side of the planet, Barry still holds that power, dammit.

I shove him from my mind and swipe my limbs across the rumpled cotton, making an angel on the feather and foam. On the other side of the bedroom wall, water clatters onto slick marble tiles. Xander, owner of this fine bed and plush penthouse apartment, taking a shower.

Snippets of last night flash in my head, lighting up some of the darkness that’s lived there since the divorce. The bar, the restaurant, the fish washed down with a bottle of perfectly chilled Chablis, champagne bubbles tickling the back of my throat, making out with Xander on the freezing terrace, our bodies tangled under his thick duvet, the sky and the stars and the glittering lights stretching into the darkness like a carpet of diamonds. My head rolls on the pillow to face the far wall, where the tiniest strip of daylight pushes through the floor-to-ceiling drapes. The fabulous but freezing terrace on the other side of that wall of windows where I stood, pressed against the glass railing, staring out at the view.

I push up onto an elbow and blink around the dim bedroom, wondering how long Xander’s showers typically run. My gaze drifts to the open bedroom door, and a strip of lit-up runner in the hallway. Puffs of steam waft across the plush burgundy carpet like a nightclub fog machine. Apparently, pretty long.

“Does this hookup come with coffee? Oat milk if you’ve got some, and I wouldn’t say no to a croissant.”

This new Rayna, she’s cheeky. The kind of girl who wakes up the morning after a drunken one-night stand with no regrets. Zero. Not a single one.

My phone buzzes on the nightstand, and I roll onto a hip and pluck it from the charger. My roommate, Ingrid, the gorgeous, lanky blonde I met on craigslist when I answered her ad for a spare room. Ingrid works in the city center, at a shop that doesn’t open until late morning. In the few months we’ve lived under the same roof, I’ve never seen her conscious before ten.

I frown, swiping with a thumb to answer. “What’s wrong?”

“Well, seeing as I’m here and you’re there, I’m guessing nothing.” She yawns, loud and breathy into the phone. “I take it the date was a success.”

Ingrid knows all about the date because she was there, eating breakfast in the kitchen when the notification hit my phone that Xander had swiped right. She plucked my cell out of my hand to study his profile picture, a close-up of his face bathed in late-afternoon sun.

“Cute,” she said, handing my phone back. “If you don’t swipe right, I will. Though I’m not sure about that bio. 73% gentleman. 27% rogue. What does that even mean?”

I took in Xander’s sharp jawline, wide-set eyes, crooked, close-lipped smile that made him look like he was holding on to a secret.

“I don’t know, but I’m intrigued.”

He was handsome enough that I swiped right, too. Almost immediately, another notification pinged my phone: It’s a match! And two seconds after that, a message.

Hello, Rayna with the red hair. How is your day so far?

Perhaps a bit overeager but friendly enough, and not the least bit icky. The perfect first message as far as I was concerned.

After that, the day was a blur of back and forth. First via Tinder, then on WhatsApp, then through comments on my Instagram.

Nice wings, he left under a shot of me last summer in Nashville, standing against a wall with a painted mural of a butterfly. Next time you go to Music City, #ImIn.

I smile into the phone. “Yes, Ingrid. The date went very well.”

“Are you still there?” she says, her voice perkier now. “Are you with him right now?”

I wriggle higher on the pillow, listening to the water on the other side of the wall. I hadn’t heard him slip out of bed, hadn’t so much as stirred when the shower started up, which says a little something about the state I was in last night.

“No.” There’s a soft whirring and the wall to my left shifts, the blackout shades working on what I assume is a timer. They travel up a wall of steel-and-glass windows, letting in a mauve, early morning light. “He’s currently in the shower.”

Ingrid squeals, and the sound does something to me. My old life was filled with moments like these, early morning gossip fests about the night before, trading anecdotes about our lives and families and men. Since moving to Amsterdam, my address book has become a lot slimmer, but whoever said women in Amsterdam are notoriously difficult to befriend has never met Ingrid. From the moment I wheeled my suitcase into her apartment, she’s been nothing but friendly—and Lord knows I could use a friend.

“Why did you answer the phone?” she says now. “Get your ass in there. What is it you Americans say? Do it for the team.”

She hangs up before I can correct her.

I toss my phone to the bed, telling myself that Ingrid is right. I should get in there, mostly because it’s the opposite of what the old Rayna would do. The old Rayna would be chastising herself for spending a night with a man she just met and slinking out of here in shame. The new and improved Rayna, though—Rayna 2.0—she knows how to have a good time.

On the other side of the wall, the shower is still going, the steam still creeping along the hallway runner. New city, new life, new me.

I push back the covers and slide out of bed. “Hey, lover. You got

room in that fancy shower of yours for me?”


LIKE THE REST of this place, Xander’s bathroom is a work of art. A great wash of veiny brown and cream marble stretched across the floors, climbing the walls, plopped onto floating cabinets and molded into sinks. LED lights blaze down from sleek spotlights in the ceiling, a light so bright it stops me in the doorway. I stand there for a minute, blinking into the steamy space.

A towel is tossed carelessly on the floor next to a bath mat. A tube of toothpaste lies on the edge of the sink on the left wall. The shower is still going, tucked behind a marble wall and a door of steamed-up glass, a steady clattering that echoes in the room. A tiny frisson of electricity crackles under my skin. He’s been in there an awfully long time.

“Xander?”

No answer.

I take a tentative step forward, and my bare foot lands in a tepid puddle. That’s when I notice the rest of the floor is wet, too, big pools of water like someone sprayed the marble with a garden hose. Next to the big square tub, a dented shampoo bottle lies on its side, burping up a purple-tinged goo, thick and slimy. A good ten feet from the shower door.

“Everything okay in there?”

Everything is not okay. Of this I am certain. I know it with every ounce of my being even if I can’t quite name what’s wrong. An instinctual kind of alarm bell, like running up to the edge of a cliff. I know it long before I step onto the drenched bath mat and tug open the shower door.

The first thing I see is a foot, male and knobby. Don’t look don’t look don’t look. It’s like an out-of-body experience—me screaming the instruction at myself from above, but it’s too late because I’ve already seen the foot and the angle is all wrong. Xander’s toes are pointed to the sky. Like he fell, maybe, whacked his head on the way down. Knocked himself unconscious and landed flat on his back.

Except no. This is more than unconscious. This is utterly, horrifyingly still. Despite the steaming water beating down on his motionless body. Despite me nudging his bare foot with mine.

My gaze wanders up his body. His long, lean legs, his athletic torso. One hand is curled in a loose fist on his chest, the other arm, his right, is stretched across the floor as if he’s reaching for something. For a full five seconds, I watch swirls of pretty pink spiral toward the drain before I realize what it is: blood, leaking from the stump where his pointer finger used to be.

But the finger isn’t the worst, not by a long shot. Xander’s eyes are open, but they’re wide and red and empty. His mouth hangs in a yawn or maybe a deep breath he can’t catch because his neck . . .

Oh my God. His neck. A thin band of opaque plastic is wrapped around it like a tourniquet.

It’s a zip tie. A fucking zip tie.

I scream and lurch backward, one foot catching in the mat, the other skidding across the water-slick floor. My arms flail, and my feet fly upward. I land on a hip, hitting the marble hard enough to rattle my teeth.

Holy shit.

I scrabble forward on my hands and knees, and maybe it’s all the booze, but last night’s dinner comes up in a sudden and sour wave, a perfectly cooked piece of halibut on a bed of creamy peas and haricots verts. It lands on the marble with the water and the blood

and the purple-tinged shampoo, splashing on my knees and thighs.

I stagger to a stand and stumble back toward the hall, but the floor is wet and the bathroom is spinning and this is really happening. Xander is really dead. Someone really killed him while I was sleeping in the next room.

Not dead. Murdered.

 

REVIEW - THE NAMES BY FLORENCE KNAPP

  

Title: The Names
Author: Florence Knapp
Publisher: Phoenix Books, Orion Books
Genre: General Fiction, Literary Fiction
Release Date: 6th May 2025

BLURB
Tomorrow - if morning comes, if the storm stops raging - Cora will register the name of her son. Or perhaps, and this is her real concern, she'll formalise who he will become.

It is 1987, and in the aftermath of a great storm, Cora sets out with her nine-year-old daughter to register the birth of her son. Her husband intends her to follow a long-standing family tradition and call the boy after him. But faced with the decision, Cora hesitates, questioning whether it is right for her child to share his name with generations of domineering men. Her choice in this moment will shape the course of their lives.

Seven years later, her son is Bear, a name chosen by his sister, and one that will prove as cataclysmic as the storm from which it emerges. Or he is Julian, the name his mother set her heart on, believing it will give him the opportunity to become his own person. Or he is Gordon, named after his father and raised in his image - but is there still a chance to break the mould?

This is the story of three names, three versions of a life and the infinite possibilities that a single decision can spark. It is the story of one family and how love endures, no matter what fate has in store.

Goodreads Link 

REVIEW
There are two different covers for this book, though I do like both, the one I have featured above is the one that represents the book really well. The figure at the centre that could easily be Cora or her son and the three shadows for the three different names and the three different ways life could go dependent upon Cora's choice at the registrars office when giving her baby son his name. The cover is quite stark and harsh feeling which I think depicts the hard decision and harsh consequences Cora faces dependant on the choice she makes.

Three different names, Bear, Julian & Gordon. Bear is 9-year-old sister Maia's choice, Julian, Mum Cora's choice, & and Gordon, "chosen/imposed" by dad Gordon & his family, a tradition that isn't open to discussion and  has to be upheld!
Three choices each with consequences, what happens in each different scenario of name is chosen.
Bear - the name chosen by 9 year old Maia who likens the soft cuddly qualities of a bear to her snuggly baby brother and her expectation he will become big and brave.

Cora knows she is taking a big chance disobeying her husband and the expectation of his family that, of course, there's no question their son will be called Gordon. Cora also knows that deep down, there will be a price to pay. She prepares by having friend Mehri take Maia swimming with her own daughter Fern. When Mehri offers to keep Maia for tea, Cora immediately accepts knowing it gives her time to tell Gordon and deal with any fallout before Maia arrives home. Cora hides Bear, her precious baby in a cupboard upstairs and prepares to tell Gordon the news. She greets him at the door, takes his coat, kisses him on the cheek as is expected of her all the while dreading what is to come.
When Cora reveals the name Bear, at first Gordon seems to think it's a joke and he smiles....then the anger explodes & the violence begins which continues until finally Cora shouts for help, which leads to the death of a bystander but freedom for Cora, Maia who has witnessed the abuse as she has grown up and the baby brother she named Bear.
Gordon is sent to prison, and Cora tries to build a new, happier life for herself and her children with support from friends Mehri & Roland. Cora is never truly free of guilt that her freedom came at the cost of another man's life and every year lays flowers on his grave thanking him for his intervention that day. It's only years later that Bear puts two and two together and realises this strangers death is connected to him and his name.
Julian - is the name chosen by Cora, meaning 'sky father', so in Cora's heart & mind still honouring his father Gordon without giving him the exact same name. Maia is excited as her name means mother, and her brothers name means father. It's another bond they will share.
Cora cooks Gordon's favourite meal, Maia helps set and decorate the table. When the name is revealed Maia chatters excitedly about it meaning sky father, trying to distract her father from the brewing anger. Gordon sends Maia off to run a bath, leaving him alone with Cora. Gordon is immediately abusive towards Cora and aggressively pushes her face into her half eaten meal, telling Cora he won't be letting this go. Cora silently says to herself this will be the last time knowing further violence is on the immediate horizon.
Seven years later, after being registered as Julian, he, along with his sister Maia, are living a new life with their maternal grandmother, Silbhe, in Ireland.
Further details of what happened that night, seven years before, are not revealed. Maia does discuss that she remembers hearing everything as she had covered Bears' ears, so he did so had no hands to cover her own ears.

Gordon - the name imposed, demanded and expected by Gordon and his family leaves Cora so disappointed in herself & resentful that she just went along with a name she didn't want, she finds it difficult to bond with baby Gordon. She finds it difficult in many ways and
her husband Gordon uses these 'failings' and 'neglectful acts' as a weapon within his abuse, and he threatens to take the children away from her! So  despite choosing the name Gordon, the one her husband and his family wanted, Cora still suffers violence & abuse. Even when Maia reaches out to her maternal grandmother, Silbhe in Ireland Cora refuses to leave, knowing in her heart that Gordon wouldn't hesitate to take her children from her and deny her any contact with them. Which would mean leaving them at the mercy of an abusive man.

There's so much more to the book than the sections I have shared, each of the three names/lives/directions have their own positives and negatives.

I felt instant empathy with Cora, the descriptions of the familiar feelings of walking on eggshells. The overwhelming urge of wanting to keep the peace and please someone who will never be satifisedno matter how much you give or do for them. The instinct and protectiveness of moving your child to another room doing an activity meaning they hopefully won't hear and witness their fathers' outbursts. Then finally getting out, trying to rebuild a life but at the same time never being able to trust another man fully, wondering what their trigger would be to aggression, anger and violence.

I loved Maia's character, a second mum to her baby brother, and a peacemaker, pacifier, whenever possible. Sadly you don't realise how much Maia was aware of until later in the book as she grows older.

Then there's Bear, soft, cuddly, brave, and strong, or Julian 'Sky Father' or Gordon expected to follow in his father's and grandfathers footsteps. Whichever name Cora's baby boy is given, he may have elements of both parents, but it doesn't mean he has to or will become like his abusive father. He is also 'nurtured' and experiences life in different ways in different scenarios.

Although the book depicts a relationship that has domestic violence, there's also loving, caring, and romantic relationships within the book.

The book shows three alternating versions of the characters' lives covering thirty-five years. Each version of life presents its own version of healing, life going on despite the scars and shadows caused by domestic violence, and that ever present feeling that your abuser is 'out there' and could reappear in your life any time he feels like it.

My immediate thoughts upon finishing reading The Names was that though it brought back my own memories of domestic violence i enjoyed reading it, found it thought provoking, and I hope it raises awareness of 'what goes on behind closed doors' and gives those that are quick to say 'Why doesn't she just leave' something to think about.

Summing up this book is about the choices we make and the different paths we take and what they lead us to in the future, but the book is also a totally honest depiction of Domestic Violence and why it's not as simple as just leaving the situation, especially when children are involved and the abuser a well respected member of the community"

 THE OTHER COVER 

This cover also fits the book well in that in one of the three versions of life Cora
loves gardening and nurturing her garden. The three flowers also representing
the three different versions of the characters lives. This cover leans more to the 

poetic & poignant feelings of the book and is visually softer and more delicate.

 

Which of the covers is your favourite or like me, do you like them both for their different qualities 

and for different reasons?

 

 

REVIEW - AFTER TASTE BY DARIA LAVELLE

 

Title: After Taste

Author: Daria Lavelle

Publisher: Bloomsbury UK & ANZ

Release Date: 22nd May 2025

 

BLURB 

Konstantin Duhovny is a haunted man. His father died when he was ten, and ghosts have been hovering around Kostya ever since. Kostya can’t exactly see the ghosts, but he can taste their favorite foods. Flavors of meals he’s never eaten will flood his mouth, a sign that a spirit is present. Kostya has kept these aftertastes a secret for most of his life, but one night, he decides to act on what he’s tasting. And everything changes.

Kostya discovers that he can reunite people with their deceased loved ones—at least for the length of time it takes for them to eat a dish that he’s prepared. He thinks his life’s purpose might be to offer closure to grieving strangers, and sets out to learn all he can by entering a particularly fiery ring of Hell: the New York culinary scene. But as his kitchen skills catch up with his ambitions, Kostya is too blind to see the catastrophe looming in the Afterlife. And the one person who knows Kostya must be stopped also happens to be falling in love with him.

Set in the bustling world of New York restaurants and teeming with mouthwatering food writing, Aftertaste is a whirlwind romance, a heart-wrenching look at love and loss, and a ghost story about all the ways we hunger—and how far we’d go to find satisfaction.

Lavelle’s debut is a multi-course tasting menu of a book that will sate, delight, excite, comfort, and inspire even the pickiest of readers.

 

Goodreads Link 

 

REVIEW
I’ve seen two different covers for this book and have to say I love them both! Though if I absolutely had to choose between them, I think it would be the darker cover with the salt cascading down into the ghostly blue/green essence. I think the byline on this book is what makes me favour it slightly more over the other one too!

I was lucky enough to read a sampler of this book and lets just say a taster was not enough (pardon the pun). I do find the afterlife and all the different ways we can communicate with those there a fascinating subject. After discovering Kostya’s gift was “clairgustance” (which I had never heard of before) I was totally intrigued and knew I needed to read this book to learn more and discover Kostya’s story.

We initially meet the main character, Konstantin Duchovny or Kostya as his friends later call him. Kostya deeply regrets the last angry words he had with his father who was rushing to get to work and ended up being involved in an accident and was killed. Kostya has never forgiven himself for those last angry words and always yearned for a chance to apologise to his father. Sadly, after the death of Kostya’s father, his mother is consumed by the loss & grief and pays very little attention to an increasingly lonely young son, who already feels isolated due to being in a country with a language and customs still foreign to him.
When a game he used to play with his father suddenly evolves and reappears back in his life, he isn't sure what to think. He can suddenly taste emotions and a food/meal without ever having eaten it. It makes him feel closer to his father again so of course he embraces it. It takes away some of the feelings of loneliness he is having and reminds him of the happy memories he had with his father. He tries to explain it to his mother, wanting and expecting reassurance and loving understanding from her. Instead, he is taken to doctors who poke, prod, and medicate him, and send him to an institution for more poking and prodding. When Kostya cannot stand it any longer, he simply agrees with those thinking he made it all up for attention and is finally sent back home to live out an increasingly lonely existence still yearning for attention from his mother and a way to make peace with his last angry words with his father.

As Kostya grows up he continues having these “tastes” they are clearly here to stay and not something he is making up. Kostya experiments with the encouragement of his best friend and flatmate Frankie. Kostya’s “talent” is however hit and miss it does not always work for everyone that seeks the type of closure it offers. Kostya later realises that both sides need to want to meet for the aftertaste experience to work. Despite being warned off by tarot card reader Madame Everleigh aka Maura, who is someone with her own secrets, Kostya continues his experimentation with communicating with those in the afterlife via food/tastes.

Kostya has some interesting instances of communicating via tastes initially in a bar he is working in when he connects a Steve Tyler look-a-like to a woman in his past, to when he connects two nuns in his own small kitchen in the flat, he shares with Frankie who is himself a talented chef at a local restaurant called Wolfpup. Unfortunately, there’s a fire at Wolfpup and Frankie is killed. Once again, Kostya is experiencing grief, this time of a close friend whom had become like family to him.

Its then that Madame Everleigh/Maura comes back into his life and shares her own secrets and her grief for her sister Everleigh. Basically, they support each other, they become each others world really, each encouraging the other to continue to live and not dwell on the past so much.

Just when Kostya is about to give up on his dream of a restaurant where he could serve closure as well as amazing tasting food, an unexpected offer arrives from Viktor Musizchka. Viktor will provide the premises, with a kitchen fitted out to Kostya’s specifications, Kostya can also choose his own kitchen team. Once again, Kostya ignores advice, this time it’s his mother who tells Kostya that Viktor Musizchka is in the mob and a dangerous man.

Kostya recreates a last taste/last conversation for Maura and her sister Everleigh though Maura insists on being alone for the experience and refuses to talk about it afterwards with Kostya. It turns out that Madame Everleigh/Maura’s warning that there is always a price to be paid for connecting to the other side is correct. Despite Maura & Kostya trying to put things right on one side of the afterlife and Everleigh & Frankie trying on the afterlife side when nothing they do works and the ultimate price has to be paid Kostya bravely accepts his fate.

I loved Kostya’s character it was such a shame his own mother wasn’t able to put her own grief aside to listen to her own son and maybe somehow help him nurture his talent. Kostya certainly had his heart in the right place, even when he had the restaurant, he insisted in doing meals and chances at a meal/ conversation with a loved one for those who could not afford the eye watering prices Viktor wanted to charge everyone. What started out as a need to reconnect this dead father has grown into a career, a very lucrative business according to Viktor, though Kostya still concentrates on helping others reconnect to dead friends & family. Enabling closure for those here & in the afterlife.

I had mixed feeling about Maura, you’ll understand why when you read the book. I was interested in her as a tarot reader and why she became Madame Everleigh but when she makes her confession to Kostya I kind of lost respect for her. Then again, I still couldn’t help liking her.

The book really takes you on wave of different emotions, there is humour, but it does deal with grief and what entails, what it feels like for different people. It really deals with grief well, openly and honestly. I it was the serious subject matter that made me seem to read at a slower pace than usual. I kind of read a bit, thought about it, then read more. It’s the type of book that really makes you think.

The descriptions in the book are brilliant, I loved the comparison of something being “like carving a roast.” I have to admit I wasn’t initially keen on the famous Steven Tyler reference with Charlie, I don't think it was really needed though I guess having his first aftertaste with a famous person look-a-like added more interest and imagery. There’s lots of foods, herbs, and ingredients mentioned that I felt went totally over my head, though “foodies” will probably recognise them and see more relevance than I did. Having said that, I did still enjoy reading the detailed descriptions of the different tastes Kostya was getting, the way he detailed the flavours, different foods/ingredients and the seasonings. It made me feel a little guilty not being able to fully appreciate those descriptions and how Kostya pulled the meal together to recreate not just a meal but that persons specific tast and experience of that meal that they had previously eaten with their loved one.

My immediate thoughts upon finishing the book were that it was interesting, intriguing, had a captivating plot, great world building & characters you grew to love. It was a shame there was no “riding off into the sunset” for Kostya and Maura.

Summing up, I was intrigued and loved the clairgustance aspect and really enjoyed reading those sections. I have mixed feelings & emotions about the ending, though when you think a little & have time to 'digest' the book, the ending was quite fitting & poignant. This book was definitely captivating and deeply emotional......depending on your beliefs, very emotive. I know for sure that I would have been extremely tempted by an offer from Kostya for one last meal/conversation with my parents.
 

 The other version of the book cover