The First Glance That Changed Everything

For readers who crave more than plot—this month, I’m inviting you backstage into the pulse of A Taste of Gold.

One of the most intimate scenes I’ve ever written happens not with a kiss. Not with a confession.

It’s a twelve-year-old boy with a broken tooth. No money. No father in sight. Just a Jewish dentist in Regency London, with gold in his hands and secrets in his name.

And when the boy tells our doctor—the hero—that he’ll be paid in plum tarts instead of pounds… something shifts.

We know who this man is. The hero of the story.

We know what he values.

And we begin to understand what it means to be the only Jewish dentist trusted with a Royal Warrant—yet too afraid to sign his real name.

That’s Felix Leafley.

Or rather, Faivish Blattner. A man who once packed fillings with gold so fine they shimmered like enamel, and who now hides behind an English alias while searching for the woman he lost.

A woman who, four years earlier, hummed through the doorway of her father’s dental practice in Vienna—and shattered his heart with a song.

He’s never forgotten.

And I’m letting you backstage.

Because I wrote this book for readers who don’t want just plot, you want pulse.

You want silk gloves and stolen glances. You want a love story that aches at the edges. And yes, you want dangerous truths hidden behind perfect smiles.

You want to feel something.

And that’s exactly what’s waiting for you… a bonus prologue, exclusively published here in Sara Adrien’s Substack. (Yes, I wrote this just for you!)

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Bonus Prologue – Vienna, 1812

He came to study medicine.

He didn’t expect her.

Faivish Blattner stood shoulder-to-shoulder with thirty other students in the stifling heat of the medical amphitheater, sweat already pooling beneath his collar. His notes were inked with too much care; his cuffs smelled faintly of boiled vinegar and salt. Everything about the room was ordinary: the curved wooden benches, the echo of German phrases bouncing off stone walls, the scent of chalk, flesh, ink.

Until she appeared.

She slipped in through the side door, backlit by the late-morning sun. No bonnet, no flourish. Just a plain cotton dress the color of ash, sleeves rolled to the elbow. Her hair was pinned too tightly, but one dark curl had broken free, as if it couldn’t stand the restraint.

She didn’t belong there. Not in that world of ink-stained cuffs and anatomy talk. What was a girl doing here? And one like her?

Then he heard it—a mumble in Yiddish from one of the older students.

Professor Morgenschein’s daughter.

And then—without a word—she began handing out syllabi.

Each page bore the mark of Professor Morgenschein: a meticulous chart of topics, dissections, attendance policies. Most students didn’t look at the paper. They looked at her.

So did he.

She was not beautiful—not in the practiced way of Viennese debutantes. But something in her face refused to be ordinary. The line of her cheek, the press of her lips. Her gaze moved with purpose. Sharp, not shy. She handed him a page.

And in that instant—