Luna Tango in Aussie Readers

Feb 27, 2020 Brenda rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary-fiction, 2014-release, aussie-authors, read-on-kindle, own-read, historical-fiction

Daniela McKenna’s mother abandoned her when she was just five years old, and she hadn’t seen or heard of her since. Dani was a journalist so heading to Argentina to report on the famous and well-loved tango was a good cover story. After all, her mother became a famous tango dancer in that country. Her meeting with the legendary tango dancer Carlos Escudero, was fraught with difficulties from the start. Carlos no longer danced because of a past accident, but he taught. He also had a hatred of jou ...more

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Aug 12, 2014 Bree T rated it really liked it

Shelves: arc, alpha-hero, aww2014, south-america, hist-contemp-blend

Journalist Dani McKenna has journeyed to Argentina to kickstart her career in writing features. Helped along by Tourism Argentina, Dani plans to write articles on the famous tango and she wants the help of Carlos Escudero. A renown tango dancer, an accident ended his career and now he famously keeps to himself. He has a known distrust of journalists and Dani needs to win him over.

Carlos offers Dani a deal – for every step she learns, he will answer a question. Dani has never danced. When she was Journalist Dani McKenna has journeyed to Argentina to kickstart her career in writing features. Helped along by Tourism Argentina, Dani plans to write articles on the famous tango and she wants the help of Carlos Escudero. A renown tango dancer, an accident ended his career and now he famously keeps to himself. He has a known distrust of journalists and Dani needs to win him over.

Carlos offers Dani a deal – for every step she learns, he will answer a question. Dani has never danced. When she was 5 years old her mother left her and her father and ran away to Argentina and became one of the most celebrated tango dancers. Dani thinks she has two left feet but Carlos is confident that he can teach anyone to tango.

While learning from Carlos, Dani becomes fascinated of a legend of tango and music from 1950s Argentina. She feels drawn to it, she needs to know more. Despite Carlos warning her off digging deeper into the story, Dani cannot help herself. She knows that this story not only needs to be solved but also that it involves her and her family and explains three generations of heartache, loss and love/hate for the tango.

Because tango, like love is complicated.

I have to admit the cover of this book was pretty much the driving force behind my requesting it for review. There’s something so compelling about that close pose, the gorgeous building in the background. I was ready for a story of passion and dance and mystery. And to be honest, that’s pretty much what I got.

Dani has arrived in Argentina and sets out to secure the impossible, an interview with the now famously reclusive Carlos Escudero. A hot blooded Latin to his core, Carlos was one of the country’s most celebrated dancers, along with his ex-fiance before a car accident left him with a damaged leg. He no longer dances, instead he teaches others and although Dani has always avoided the tango, as it brings painful memories, she wants Carlos’s input and so she agrees to his conditions.

Interspersed with Dani’s story is that of Louisa, muse for the famous composer Eduardo Canziani in 1953 and how it ended in murder and tragedy. Despite being warned off by Carlos, because this is an Argentine mystery, Dani still feels as though she could possibly find out what happened. She also needs to work through her issues with her mother, who is believed to be living somewhere remote in Argenina, having retired from dancing. Dani wants answers from her mother why she left her, why she gave up her family in order to dance. Despite the fact that tango has been the cause of much pain in Dani’s life and she feels negatively about it, there’s no doubt that it’s already in her blood and that she’s drawn to it. After all she’s made it the subject of her articles and she agrees to Carlos’s demand that she learn to dance. And under his tutelage, she is making a lot of progress.

I found both the historical and contemporary stories really easy to become invested in. I liked Dani almost immediately and enjoyed most of her sparring matches with Carlos. At first he tends to believe that all journalists are evil and opportunistic and Dani is trying to prove to him that she doesn’t care about the accident that ruined his career, only the history of the tango and how it evolved. Slowly he comes to believe her, especially when she gives up opportunities for other stories, things that would run in gossip columns and probably receive a lot of attention. Dani is coming off a broken engagement but she and Carlos have a simmering kind of attraction almost right from the beginning and the more they get to know each other, the more it seems obvious that Dani is going to find more than just answers on this trip.

As a mother myself, I had a little trouble understanding Dani’s own mother Iris and her motivations for leaving behind her husband and 5yo child. One of my children is 5 and the idea of vanishing from his life by choice is so foreign to me, something that I cannot grasp. Much is made of tango being a way of life, an obsession, something that takes precedence over all others and the seeking of that perfect moment in harmony with another person (entrega) but perhaps I’m far too practical to really be able to grasp that. For me, my family is far more important and always would be and even if I were unhappy in my current life, I couldn’t see myself being happy anywhere else without them. I actually thought Dani, after a little bit of anger, was pretty forgiving of the choices her mother had made. I guess she wanted the chance to have the relationship with her mother as an adult that was denied to her as a child.

Luna Tango is an entertaining blend of romance, passion, mystery and intrigue in an exotic setting that I really enjoyed reading. I loved watching the story of Louisa unfold and actually, I think I could’ve read a whole book devoted to that. Interestingly, this is the first in a series so I’m curious to see where it goes from here. ...more

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Dec 25, 2016 Janine rated it really liked it

First book of Alli's that I have read. This book is set in South America and tells the story of Dani who is hoping to break into a key journalism role by reporting on the history of the Tango. It is also a way for her to escape a recent break-up with her boyfriend who is also her boss, and search for the mother who abandoned her when she was 5 to pursue her dreams of being a revered Tango dancer.

The time frame switches back and forth between two different periods and it took me a little while t ...more

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Jun 02, 2014 Tien rated it really liked it

Shelves: net-galley, kindle, australian-author, romance, argentina

Judge a book by the cover? Always! Sometimes the cover does tell you quite a bit on what the book is about and Luna Tango definitely falls within this category. Let’s not dismiss the title either though I can tell you that it’s definitely not about (literally) dancing the tango in moonlight ;) A gorgeous cover with bright colours and a promise of the exotic –what more can you ask for as cover for a romantic novel? And which girl can resist a sexy & broody hero?

Dani McKenna’s love life has just b Judge a book by the cover? Always! Sometimes the cover does tell you quite a bit on what the book is about and Luna Tango definitely falls within this category. Let’s not dismiss the title either though I can tell you that it’s definitely not about (literally) dancing the tango in moonlight ;) A gorgeous cover with bright colours and a promise of the exotic –what more can you ask for as cover for a romantic novel? And which girl can resist a sexy & broody hero?

Dani McKenna’s love life has just bombed out and she’s now in pursuit of her career –or so she thinks. She has decided to write about Tango, the curse of her family, and her first interviewee is to be Carlos Escuedero; a well-known tango dancer who has had to give up his dancing days due to some scandal. As always, things are not what they seem and Dani & Carlos will have to work out whether they can trust each other with their secrets.

Parallel to Dani’s story is Louisa’s story set in 1950s which had become (by Dani’s time) a somewhat mysterious legend for when the truth is known may rock the Tango world and maybe even the country. I must confess my preference for this past-world as I feel the love story was more heartfelt and rather grand –reaching over the years despite the anguish. With this comparison, I also found that the Dani & Carlos ‘relationship’ seems to be rather easy... ie. ‘stumbling blocks’ seem rather like pebbles and all smoothed out with just a tad of distress. Their attraction and sexual tension was felt but there was a lack of the entertaining playful teasing that I most appreciate in romance novels; I seem to only remember one particular bit of this in this book.

This book is totally rated on the ease of reading and it was so very easy –I inhaled it within a few hours and basically ignored everybody else in the house. It was a precious few peaceful hours well spent in the company of tango (there were bits & pieces about tango including some history that I appreciated). I think all I was missing was the background tango music in an otherwise, perfect evening in Argentina with a bunch of exotic men <3 <3 <3

Thank you, Harlequin Books Australia for copy of eARC via NetGalley ...more

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Aug 02, 2014 Lauredhel added it

Shelves: netgalley, dnf

DNF on page 88 of Luna Tango. You win some, you lose some. This isn't for me. I'm just drowning in clichés of indelibly entwining souls and wilting passion, and in stultifying repetition of how amazing tango is. My netgalley reading has screeched to a halt while I pick this up and put it down again. Lots of people seem to love this on Goodreads - people will need to read their reviews instead. Onward! ...more

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