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Summary
Summary
Emily Price learns that not everything broken is meant to be fixed as she follows her heart and finds her joy in the charming Italian countryside.
Emily Price--fix-it girl extraordinaire and would-be artist--dreams of having a gallery show of her own. There is no time for distractions, especially not the ultimate distraction of falling in love.
But Chef Benito Vassallo's relentless pursuit proves hard to resist. Visiting from Italy, Ben works to breathe new life into his aunt and uncle's faded restaurant, Piccollo. Soon after their first meeting, he works to win Emily as well--inviting her into his world and into his heart.
Emily astonishes everyone when she accepts Ben's proposal and follows him home. But instead of allowing the land, culture, and people of Monterello to transform her, Emily interferes with everyone and everything around her, alienating Ben's tightly knit family. Only Ben's father, Lucio, gives Emily the understanding she needs to lay down her guard. Soon, Emily's life and art begin to blossom, and Italy's beauty and rhythm take hold of her spirit.
Yet when she unearths long-buried family secrets, Emily wonders if she really fits into Ben's world. Will the joys of Italy become just a memory, or will Emily share in the freedom and grace that her life with Ben has shown her are possible?
Contemporary romance set in Italy Full-length novel Includes Discussion QuestionsReviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Romance novelist Reay (Dear Mr. Knightley) crafts another engaging and sprightly page-turning bildungsroman. Emily Price is an art restorer and artist with underdeveloped talent and some personal blind spots. She works for an Italian expatriate based out of Atlanta, who has an exquisite art sensibility and a family that includes a handsome, sexy brother, Ben, who can cook and charm. After Emily falls for Ben, she acquires a set of Roman in-laws with secrets and another way of life. When Emily heads to Rome to meet the family, everybody has something to learn, not least the young American woman who discovers how to look at people and art with more care and consideration. The American-goes-to-Europe plot is a real chestnut, familiar but nicely revived by Reay who hits a sweet spot between adventure romance and artistic rumination; the novel finds a fantastic groove where chick lit meets Henry James. Reay's well-realized characters enliven the formula, and the moral development of the heroine owes a lot to the Jane Austen novels that Reay has echoed in other works. Though not every detail of Italian culture rings quite true, on the whole this is another delight from Reay. Agent: Claudia Cross, Folio Literary Management. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
On a whim, a restoration artist marries a chef and moves to Italy, where she uncovers hidden artwork and family secrets. Emily Price [2] is restoring a fire-damaged house in Atlanta [1] when she meets the handsome Vassallo brothers, Joseph and Ben [1], who are working to revitalize their aunt and uncles Italian restaurant. Although shes tempted to say yes when Joseph offers her a better restoration gig, she cant say no when Ben offers his hand in marriage. At first her relationship with Ben is bland in its perfection, but when she joins him at his parents restaurant in Italy, shes caught in the middle of a dispute between Bens aging father and his disapproving mother. The constant tension does wonders for her personal art projects, which never earned her as much recognition as her restoration work. Even her thoughts are more painterly, which Reay captures in a lush yet modern style: A blush on me was more of a blotchy oil-mixed-with-water affair, a discordant clash of color. I envied the whole cream-and-roses look, Emily says of her new sister-in-law. Reays signature references to literary classics, in this case, Shakespeares The Taming of the Shrew and Joyces A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man [322], beautifully match the characters desires to break free from expectations and discover themselves in new surroundings, and her depiction of Rome [136] is breathtaking. But there are so many broken things for Emily to fixtwo restaurants, a mural in a church, multiple family feudsthat her eyes cant rest on any one problem for too long. Pretty writing and a dreamy setting bring focus to an otherwise hazy plot. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Art restorer Emily Price's work schedule in Atlanta leaves little time for romance, until she meets chef Ben Vassallo. Charming and attractive, he weaves a spell around her. When Ben asks her to help restore his aunt and uncle's pizzeria in Atlanta, she agrees, and before she knows it, she is in Italy as Ben's wife. But Emily soon begins to think twice about her choices as she struggles to adjust to life in a new country. In the character of Emily, the author captures the free-spirited essence of a young woman reaching a crossroads in her life and following a path wherever it leads-sometimes with unexpected consequences. VERDICT Reay's sensually -evocative descriptions of Italian food and scenery makes this a delight for fans of Frances Mayes's Under the Tuscan Sun. The author of The Brontë Plot writes novels that speak to the universal truths in the human heart, and her latest will appeal to readers of new adult fiction with its focus on the power of -following a dream. [See author Q&A, p. 66.-Ed.] © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.