The Italian Wedding

 

The Italian Wedding by Nicky Pellegrino was part of the 3-novel volume that I needed to purchase in order to read The Food of Love Cookery School. I loved The Food of Love Cookery School (still trying to convince my husband we need to take a cooking class in Sicily - now that he watched a Hallmark movie about a cooking school in Venice, he's more intrigued by the idea of a cooking school). I simply liked The Italian Wedding. 

It was the perfect book to read on the plane on the first leg of my Italy trip. (And no, I'm not in Italy yet.) I was initially disappointed that so much of the novel took place in England, but gradually, there was more and more of the story set in Italy. At this point it's very obvious that I love reading books based in Italy, especially when they deal with food!

What was also cool is that in this novel, the main character, Pieta, is a wedding dress designer making her sister's wedding dress and helping her plan a dream wedding. The first leg of this trip I'm on is to attend my daughter's wedding. Lots of connections there!

Pieta's mother, Catherine, helps with the construction of the wedding dress. And as they sew and bead, Catherine tells Pieta about how she and Pieta's father met and fell in love. Until that point, Pieta had a very  hard time imagining her mother before she was her mother. 

This was a very enjoyable novel to read, had my mouth watering in parts, got me really excited to visit Italy (counting the days), and it would make a great Hallmark-type movie.

I look forward to reading The Villa Girls, the third novel in this volume.

Beautiful Ruins

I'd asked for recommendations for books set in Italy from Renee's Reading Club on Facebook, trying to get (even more) excited about my upcoming trip to Italy. I really wanted books set in the locales that I'll be visiting but got very few of those. Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter was recommended by a couple of people. A few others commented that they weren't crazy about the book.

I'll add myself to the list of those who weren't crazy about the book. I really did enjoy some of the descriptions of the Italian locations. Beyond that, I didn't enjoy the book. Not to mention that the Italy scenes were set in an area near Cinque Terra that I don't have the fondest memories of and probably will not return to.

None of the characters were likable, not that that determines whether or not I'll like a book. This was part war story, part family dysfunction and a huge part Hollywood melodrama. The latter is totally not my thing. I'm also confused as to why they'd use real people (Liz Taylor and Richard Burton) for a story like this. Why couldn't the stars have been as fictional as the rest of the story?

Does anyone have any better suggestions for novels set in Puglia or Sicily? Or even Rome?
 

The Secret Love Letters of Olivia Moretti

I am really not sure why I picked up The Secret Love Letters of Olivia Moretti by Jennifer Probst after I didn't really love the first book of hers that I'd read, Our Italian Summer. I guess it's because I truly am a sucker for books that are set in Italy.

I did enjoy The Secret Love Letters of Olivia Moretti a little bit more than Our Italian Summer probably because my expectations were a little bit lower. It's also quite possibly because The Secret Love Letters... did a much better job of evoking Italy than Our Italian Summer did. There were a few inaccuracies in this one such as referring to Tuscany a few times. The book was set in the Amalfi coast, not in Tuscany. The other was something about spaghetti and meatballs which is a decidedly American dish and you will never find that in an restaurant in Italy. I made a note about Coca Cola, too. But can't decipher that now.

Otherwise, as romance goes, not a bad story. And as I said, this gave me much more a feel for Italian than One Italian Summer did.

You might like this one. It's not bad. But I can't truly recommend.

 

I'm a sucker for an Adriana Trigiani book

Kiss Carlo, Adriana Trigiani's latest novel, is not my favorite Trigiani novel. But I knew it would be a sweet, quick read. Perfect for me on vacation.

The novel is set in post-WWII South Philadelphia. It's a story about family feuds, about Italian connections, about theater, about passions, about forgivess, about finding one's self. It's about race, it's about friendship, it's about controlling your own destiny. In retrospect, it was probably about too much. She could have easily written a series involving the characters in this book with each aspect of the plot given more prominence.

Even though I didn't love this book, I think what made me enjoy it is as much as I did is because the main character, surprisingly not named Carlo but rather Nicky, grows up in South Philadelphia where my daughter lives. And he finds himself at a local theater. My daughter works at a local theater. It doesn't hurt that my husband is Italian and Italian families and their stories hold a special place in my heart.

There was also a Holocaust/Jewish connection in the book. One of the cousins married a war bride from Poland. She was so integrated into the Italian family, but Nicky realized that there was something from her past that she missed. She missed being Jewish.

Much of the book was predictable but that didn't make it any less enjoyable to me.

I wonder if these characters will be back in another novel.