In Kate Harte's Fireworks on the Fourth, Susan is a successful writer of clean romance novels, but she has a past she is ashamed of. Over two decades ago, she had a love affair and gave birth to a daughter, Emma. It was at a time when unmarried mothers were not as easily accepted. Together with her best friend Verena, they set up a fake wedding with a soldier who was subsequently killed in Vietnam. Susan plans a get-together at her Fairacres estate for the July Fourth weekend and is horrified when Emma arrives with her boyfriend Richard, the same lover Susan had in Nice all those years ago. Jonathon, Richard’s nephew, is invited down to distract Emma from her current romantic interest, but as the pretense and the tensions build, the possible incestuous connection cannot be ignored. Can it be kept secret?

Fireworks on the Fourth by Kate Harte is so much more than a romantic story of a lost love and a difficult and misunderstood mother-daughter relationship. The author explores so many themes and layers, contrasting morals, attitudes, and beliefs from the Boomer days to Gen X. These are insightful and make for excellent reading. Topics range from raising boys versus girls, literary knowledge, abortion rights, human rights, religion, sex, and politics. The author leaves no stone unturned, and the honesty is refreshing. It raised my awareness of how life has changed in only two decades or one generation. Besides this being a well-written book, I would recommend it based on that aspect alone.

Susan Ferguson, a single mother and best-selling romance novelist, better known by her pseudonym, Daphne Dulaney, had not seen her estranged daughter, Emma, since December. Eager to mend her broken relationship with her daughter, Susan hosts a Fourth of July holiday house party and invites Emma. Emma agrees to show up but announces she will be bringing her boyfriend, whom Susan has yet to meet. However, nothing would have prepared Susan for what she sees when Emma arrives at her Connecticut house with her companion. Richard Thornton, Emma’s boyfriend, is the same man who broke Susan’s heart decades ago, and chances are, he might be Emma’s father. Have Emma and Richard committed the terrible sin of incest? Only a DNA test will tell. Find out how it all goes down in Kate Harte’s Fireworks on Fourth.

If you love contemporary romance novels blended with drama, Kate Harte’s Fireworks on Fourth is the perfect pick. Running the plot on a multi-perspective timeline, Harte introduced me to a fascinating, dynamic cast. The subtle tone of the storyline hooked me, leaving me flipping through page after page. Set in the mid-to-late twentieth century, the vivid depictions uniquely capture the mood, setting, and lifestyle of that era. It felt like I was in every scene next to the cast, closely following as the events unfolded. The sharp and lively conversations, dripping with wit, sarcasm, banter, and tension, gave depth to the cast’s conflicts, intricate emotions, and complex traits, allowing me to connect with them. I was enveloped in a whirlwind of intellectual sparring, family drama, sensual escapades, secrets, adventure, and more.

Kate Harte’s Fireworks on the Fourth is a sophisticated, sexy, comedy romance set mainly in a Connecticut estate over the July 4th weekend in 1992. The date is specific because the novel contrasts two specific generations, the sixties and the nineties. It involves six main players (three quasi-couples) who jostle among themselves as the complicated plot unfolds. The characters are highly intelligent, cultured, and educated. They discuss current and historical events, spar with one another, and often refer to classic literature and film as well as to popular culture. The emphasis of the plot is on how the couples manage to find the proper combinations. The story begins (as Stephen King famously advises) with a “situation”: a young woman is having an affair with an older man, a professor, who, unbeknownst to either of them, may be her father. He and her mother had a brief but passionate, true-love encounter as college students on vacation in France. The pregnant young woman faked a wedding to a Vietnam recruit who died in battle, and she never informed the real dad.

Kate Harte’s novel is thoroughly delightful. She kept me on my reader’s toes regarding who knows what about whom. The daughter and lover (possibly father) show up at the mother’s estate for the holiday, and it takes a friend of the mom and a plethora of shenanigans to manage the “situation.” Can it, in fact, possibly be managed at all? I kept turning the pages, greatly enjoying the witty prose, peppered with allusions to classical history and literature, and contrasting the elders’ culture with that of the youngsters, particularly involving sexual mores and behaviors. I became immersed not only in the challenging and often hilarious plot, but in the author’s lively prose. If you are prepared for a complex but stimulating and enjoyable read, do not miss Kate Harte’s Fireworks on the Fourth.