🌸 Shirmel’s Sit and Sip Where the Orchids Grow by Shanda Ward Chapters 1–4 + Josh Cellars Merlot

This month’s Sit and Sip is personal. Raw. Intimate.
Because Where the Orchids Grow by Shanda Ward doesn’t ease you in—it throws you into the wreckage and asks you to breathe through it. And to sip slowly. That’s why I paired it with Josh Cellars Merlot—a deep, mellow red that tastes like buried memories and soft heartbreak.

📖 The Story So Far…
We meet Mahogany in a hospital bed—broken but breathing.
The man who claimed to love her, Tyree, tried to kill her.
And the man who truly did love her, Langston, had already walked away—forced to let her go when the trauma wiped away every memory of what they shared.
But what Where the Orchids Grow does so beautifully is peel back the layers—not just of Mahogany, but of Langston too.
Langston is grieving, not just for Mahogany, but for a life he was never given. His mother, bitter and bedridden in a nursing home, makes it clear—he’s always been second to Marco, the golden boy half-brother whose father, Silas, once terrorized Langston as a child.
That darkness shaped him, yet somehow he still learned how to love—how to protect.
And protect is what he still does. Quietly. Painfully.
While Mahogany—now a rising fashion designer with a fractured past and no knowledge of their shared love—tries to find stability in a life that feels unfamiliar. She’s met her birth mother, but their bond is brittle. Her big sister? Her existence still unknown to.
And yet, Langston keeps showing up.
Sending her orchids. Watching from afar.
Even buying her pink champagne in a moment that shatters him all over again—because she doesn’t recognize the man who once held her heart.
All while the threat of Tyree still looms.
Out of sight, but not gone.
Promising to finish what he started.

🍷 Why Josh Cellars Merlot?
This wine is it.
Full-bodied but soft on the finish—just like Langston.
It’s layered with notes of ripe plum, black cherry, and a touch of cocoa. It lingers, just like this story. Each sip is smooth but complex—perfect for a novel where love lives under the surface, and pain doesn’t always leave visible bruises.
This isn’t a bubbly book.
This is a Merlot moment.
One you sit with.
One that aches a little—and soothes all the same.

✨ Final Sip Thoughts
Where the Orchids Grow is about survival, memory, and unspoken love.
It’s about the kind of bond that even trauma can’t fully erase.
In these first five chapters, we feel the weight of loss, the ache of silence, and the soft, stubborn bloom of something that still dares to grow—no matter how broken the soil.
So tonight, pour that Merlot.
Sit with Mahogany and Langston.
And listen to what’s said in the silence.
Until next sip,
Shirmel