The first book in this series belonged to Jonah Fisher and Sadie Shaw, two rival academics who ended up married for reasons that had nothing to do with romance. A Study in Sparkling by Jodi McAlister hands the story to Jonah’s older sister, and changes almost everything else. The campus is gone, replaced by a wine bar and bookshop in Bellerive, across the river from central Hobart. The narrators are no longer two ambitious scholars but a newly single mother of three and the twenty-seven-year-old sommelier who has been quietly in love with her for a year.
Where A Study in Sparkling Sits
This is the second book in McAlister’s loose series after An Academic Affair, and she also wrote the Marry Me, Juliet trilogy about reality dating shows. Jonah, Sadie and Sadie’s sister Chess all return here as supporting characters, and their story runs underneath this one.
Fiona Fisher-Sinclair was the family’s disappointment: the one who dropped out of university to marry a rich older man. A year ago she found out that man, Matt, had spent her entire marriage running a second family in Melbourne, and that he was leaving her for them. She now has three children, no child support and a town full of school parents who never tire of telling her how brave she is.
Satoshi Tsukamoto owns Tsundoku, a wine bar stuffed with second-hand books. He grew up moving between wineries in six countries with a winemaker father, and he is studying for the Master Sommelier exam, which almost nobody passes. His older brother Isamu makes the wine and hovers over everything Satoshi does.
What makes A Study in Sparkling by Jodi McAlister interesting before a single kiss is that both leads are trying to prove something to their families. Fiona grew up among professors and PhDs who treated her marriage as proof she was the dim one. Satoshi grew up anxious and uprooted, and his brother still treats him like the fragile teenager he once was. The romance is built on two people who see each other more clearly than their relatives do.
What Jodi McAlister Adds This Time
The big change is register. A Study in Sparkling by Jodi McAlister is softer, sadder and considerably more explicit than its predecessor. It alternates between Fiona and Satoshi in first person, and each chapter opens with a short tasting note that sets the mood with a wink.
The set-up is a slow burn inverted. After a bruising day in mediation, Fiona helps Satoshi with a blind tasting in his office, confesses she assumes her sex life is over, and he offers to prove otherwise. What follows is a secret arrangement on Thursday nights, while her brother minds the kids, that the two of them try very hard to keep casual.
Around that arrangement, the novel keeps a lot of plates spinning. There is the divorce, which drags on through mediation and a court hearing. There is Matt, who wants to see his children again now that it suits him, and his partner Laura, who writes Fiona earnest emails about healing. And there is Satoshi’s junior sommelier, who keeps calling in sick, and a broken glasswasher that becomes a running joke. A Study in Sparkling by Jodi McAlister is at its best when it lets these ordinary pressures crowd in on the couple, because that is where their secret starts to cost them.
What Works
- The wine. McAlister clearly did her homework. The blind tastings, service rituals and exam structure feel real, and the book never talks down to readers who could not tell arneis from albariño.
- Satoshi. A hero with a history of panic attacks, a fondness for loud glasses frames and a sulky ginger cat. His competence is attractive; his need to prove himself to his brother is the quiet engine of his half.
- Lex. Fiona’s twelve-year-old non-binary child steals every scene, and the Boxing Day confrontation with their father is the best writing in the book.
- Fiona’s new work. Her discovery that she can write about wine professionally, and win at it, gives her a win that has nothing to do with a man.
Where A Study in Sparkling Gives Ground
- The middle sags. A long stretch told through texts, emails and group chats is fun at first but stalls the plot.
- Fiona apologises constantly. It is true to her history, and it is still exhausting on the page.
- The breakup rests on one unasked question. A throwaway remark about children from Satoshi’s ex sends Fiona into a spiral that one honest conversation would have fixed.
- Her father is a cartoon. He exists to belittle, and never becomes a person.
Do You Need An Academic Affair First?
No. A Study in Sparkling by Jodi McAlister works as a standalone, and everything you need about Jonah and Sadie is explained. It does quietly spoil one of the earlier book’s central secrets in a late chapter, so readers who plan to go back should read An Academic Affair first.
Content Notes and Heat Level
Content notes: a spouse’s long-running secret second family, emotional neglect and belittling from a parent, a transphobic comment from a parent about his child, panic attacks and exhaustion leading to a hospital visit, the remembered death of a parent, an employee’s seriously ill mother, and heavy drinking as a professional backdrop. The heat level is very high: numerous explicit, open-door scenes, phone sex, a consensual dominant streak and plenty of frank talk about pleasure.
Read These Next
Five for readers who finish A Study in Sparkling by Jodi McAlister and want more:
- An Academic Affair by Jodi McAlister. Jonah and Sadie’s own story, with the same family and a very different setting.
- Part of Your World by Abby Jimenez. An older woman, a younger man and a family who disapproves. Fiona reads it on Boxing Day.
- Yours Truly by Abby Jimenez. A divorce, a fresh start and a hero with anxiety he has learned to manage.
- The Fall Affair by Vi Keeland. A divorce lawyer, an Italian vineyard and a second act built out of wine.
- Funny Story by Emily Henry. For the theme of building a life after the person you planned around leaves.
The Last Word
The detail that stays with me is the pouring. Satoshi is taught to serve sake with two hands, as a sign of care, and he tells Fiona that refilling someone’s small cup is the whole point of drinking it together. Late in the book she takes the carafe from him and pours for him instead, awkwardly, trying to copy his grip.
That gesture is A Study in Sparkling by Jodi McAlister in miniature: a story about a woman who has spent a year being poured for, learning that she can pour back. The book is too long in the middle and leans on a familiar misunderstanding for its third act. But the wine is gorgeous, the children are real, and the romance is warm and very hot. Three and a half stars, served chilled.
