About the Book

A romantic waltz through a city filled with music, passion and coffee. 

Evelyn Watt fell in love with Austrian marketing director Rudy Moser the moment he stepped into their Boston firm. With his ice blue eyes and chocolate-melting accent, he is as refined as she imagines his home country to be. When Evelyn finds herself unexpectedly unemployed right before Christmas, she is left with an unknown future until Rudy steps in with a job appraising, assessing and cataloging heirlooms, lending her American vernacular to the translated descriptions to give each item international appeal. Evelyn will live in Vienna for the months leading up to a grand auction at a party held in conjunction with the Opera Ball—on Valentine’s Day. 

Vienna is a magical blend of waltzing, antiques, and bottomless cups of Einspanner coffee at the Café Mozart. When a secret from Rudy’s family’s past blows in with the winter chill, Evelyn is forced to confront how well she knows the object of her affection. Her café tablemate, the gruff and enigmatic Klaus Bauner might be the only person who holds the key to Rudy’s past. But could that key also unlock her future? In the days leading up to the Opera Ball, Evelyn finds herself in the middle of the greatest romance of her life…as long as she doesn’t trip over her two left feet.

My Thoughts

Photo by Léonard Cotte on Unsplash

Dripping with wit, colorful descriptions, and a story about the irreplaceable beauty of lifelong romance, Rachel McMillan has crafted a rich contemporary novella with the reverberant charm of a classic. Love in Three Quarter Time takes the reader on a delightful journey both of imagination and heart, as we travel with the insecure and lonely Evelyn Watt through the elegance of Vienna and the complexities of introspection. With Evelyn as our narrator and Rachel as the wordsmith guiding our tour, Vienna comes to life and the reader is immersed in the culture with such clarity we can almost smell the coffee.

There’s a sweet message in this story about what romance really is – the flicker versus the smolder, I guess. A lifelong romance (smolder) is something that brews deeper than tingling fingertips and heated glances, but it’s one hearts response to finding kindship in another heart, as evidenced—in Rachel’s book— by comfortable shared silence and mutual appreciation for the feelings and mind of the other person. Who wouldn’t want that, right? Wowzers!!

Rachel also touches on the idea that we shouldn’t have to alter who we are to make someone love us. True love is when someone sees the beauty you already possess and finds kinship in it, as the resident hero of Love in Three Quarter Time does.

Photo by Firdaus Roslan on Unsplash

Klaus…ah…Klaus. When we meet him, he is endearingly disgruntled and politely distant. With a smooth accent, a mature outlook, a wounded heart, and a tender spirit, the reader falls for Klaus much quicker than Evelyn, but we get the wonderful opportunity to slowly watch her make the transition from a misguided definition of love to experience what it really looks like. And disgruntled, wounded, and tender, doesn’t look bad at all 😉

With inside humor from classics like Little Women to more popular culture references like Hamilton, this story has it all – history, humor, depth, romance, far off places, heroes worth a second look and heroines worth a second chance.

Amazon | Goodreads

About the Author

Rachel McMillan is a keen history enthusiast and a lifelong bibliophile. When not writing or reading, she can most often be found drinking tea and watching British miniseries. Rachel lives in bustling Toronto, where she works in educational publishing and pursues her passion for art, literature, music, and theater.

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