Funny without being comical and sweet without being cloying, Moti on the Water was an ultimate feast for the senses. ~ Leigh – Guilty Pleasures Book Reviews
Moti on the Water, an all-new sensational summer must read from New York Times bestselling author Leylah Attar is available now!
Meet Moti Ferreira—spectacularly jinxed from the day she’s born.
Saddled with an eccentric mother, she stumbles upon the one man who holds the key to her freedom—the best man at her cousin’s upcoming wedding.
All Moti has to do is overcome her fear of water, board a yacht to the Greek Isles, seduce the dreamy Nikos Manolas, and survive two weeks at sea with her oddball family.
The only obstacle Moti doesn’t see coming is Alexandros Veronis, the onboard chef and star witness to her awkward mishaps. He transforms onions into chocolate and aroma into nostalgia. Day by day, his alchemy works its magic on Moti. But she’s not the only one falling under his spell. Everyone has a secret, growing round and ripe at Chef Alex’s table. When the masks fall off, they spill out one by one, and everything blows up in their faces.
Now Moti’s truth is exposed, and worse, she’s hooked on more than Alex’s midnight snacks. But this time, screwing up could be the best thing she’s ever done…
Laylah Attar’s beautiful and lyrical words used in the telling of Moti’s story make mine in reviewing it seem bland and tasteless. This was, without a doubt, my most favorite thing I have read this year. 
Moti on the Water tells the story of Moti (with a soft ‘t’ if you please), a young woman from an Indian family, captive with her crazy family on a luxury yacht for the wedding of her cousin to a wealthy Greek billionaire’s son. Plagued by a fortuneteller’s reading at her birth which has set the course for her life, Moti believes that one of the passengers on the private cruise is the three-thumbed man foretold to be her husband. She tries to seem poised and collected to win his admiration but fails spectacularly each and every time, only for her missteps to be witnessed by the onboard chef and Greek culinary master, Alexandros.
The only word to describe Alex is sensual. His view of food matches his view on life: that it is to be savored and explored with abandon. His dishes communicate with people in a language all its own; “His food spoke to us. It whispered to our deepest desires and stoked our deepest fears.” Much like how in Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate the heroine infused her feelings into her cooking, here Alex was able to elicit a range of emotions from those who consumed his culinary creations. With midnight snacks and edible creations for Moti that defied all of her dietary requests, he showed her a world of possibilities open to her if she was willing to take the leap. And with stories of his childhood and the scented air of the Greek islands, he wove a spell around Moti that bound these two strangers from entirely different cultures together.
Funny without being comical and sweet without being cloying, this story was an ultimate feast for the senses. Moti’s family was a train wreck of epic proportions, but they were lovable and hilarious. Alex and Moti’s romance was a beautiful melding of cultures and lifestyles and well-intended meddling, and set against the backdrop of a cruise through Greece, the story was romantic and soulful, and utterly beautiful.
5 stars
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Excerpt:
It was as if the Greek gods had orchestrated a cosmic game, put me in the center of it, and placed bets on what I would do.
This is who you’re supposed to be with,said Zeus and Hera, holding up a marble bust of Nikos. These two head honchos of Greek mythology threw their son off the top of Mount Olympus because they didn’t like the way he looked. You didn’t want to incur their wrath.
Aphrodite, Goddess of love, clapped her hands.Ah, but what you really wantto do right now is kiss Alex, don’t you? You really have to watch this gal pal. It was her husband who’d been thrown off Mount Olympus, so if it’s happily-ever-after that you’re gunning for, proceed with caution.
Always listen to your mother, Hestia piped in. She was the goddess of family and domesticity. She deserved a lot of kudos. Not many of the gods practiced what they preached, but Hestia stuck to her guns, and probably listened to her mother. Hence, she remained a virgin.
Dionysus, the Greek deity of wine and ecstasy, raised his glass. Pffft. Eat, kiss, and be merry! Pirates once seized him, thinking he was too incapacitated to fight back. Dionysus filled their ship with vines and turned them into dolphins. Moral of the story? Don’t mess with a Greek god even when he’s drunk. Also, he gave the kind of advice you could really get on board with.
About Leylah
Leylah Attar is a New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal Best Selling author of contemporary romance and women’s fiction. She is the recipient of the 2017 Indie Reader Discovery Award for fiction. Her books, which include Mists of The Serengeti, The Paper Swan, 53 Letters for My Lover (#1) and From His Lips (a 53 Letters novella #1.5), have been published in nine languages.
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