Womens Fiction published by Berkley 12 Jan 21
The Ferrari women definitely need help in the relationship department. Ambitious Francesca lives for her work and despises her mother for having no interests beyond the home and yet is jealous of the relationship her mother has with her daughter Allegra. Allegra needs to be seen by her mother and begins acting out in ways that will grab her mother’s attentions. Sophia knows something is wrong with her on the health end and wants to make a last-ditch effort to create harmony between her daughter and granddaughter before she’s gone.
Sophia longs to visit her roots in Italy and create an opportunity to heal the ills in her family on neutral ground. Enjoy an armchair trip through Italy as the Ferraris find a new meaning of life and work themselves into a close-knit loving family.
Enzo is the handsome tour guide who loves his country and truly enjoys sharing the splendor of his heritage with the people he escorts during the busy tourist season. He and Francesca seem to get off on the wrong foot on their first night in Rome, but then his rescue of her at the Spanish steps goes viral and the spark between them is lit. Where will this story go, since he’s Italian and lives in Italy and she lives in Manhattan, running a successful advertising firm that consumes her life?
Sophia is my favorite character in the story. She’s had a hard life that even her own daughter doesn’t know about, until they truly connect on this Italian odyssey. She’s fighting against an illness that might take her life and wants this once-in-a-lifetime trip to Italy and Naples where her parents hailed from. More importantly, she wants to create a safe environment for her daughter and granddaughter to connect before everything is lost in their relationship. She takes on life with a zest that’s unbeatable.
Ian and Allegra offer a very interesting love story with a definite twist that you’ll never see coming. Pivotal to all these stories is Francesca, who’s struggling with anxiety and control issues. She’s the one I best related to, having been a single mom with a very strong focus on my career, and she’s the one who grows the most in this story.
I have had the good fortune to visit Italy many times and experience some of the same destinations that the Ferraris travel to. The tour group and the various personalities and characters are very well drawn and it’s easy to relate these experiences to some of my own. There were many aha moments, especially the one where they visited Maria and her cheesemaking and pizza-making enterprise, which I have visited too. Those aprons are absolutely something, and while this is not in the book, I can recall Maria tapping one of the guys in the group with her wooden spoon when, in typical American style, he wanted to use more sauce on his pizza.
This is not the typical romance that I have grown to expect from Ms. Probst. While there is romance, it’s not the typical girl-meets-boy and ends happily ever after. The story is thought provoking with a lot of emotional and literary depth.
Grade: B
Summary:
Workaholic, career-obsessed Francesca is fiercely independent and successful in all areas of her life except one: family. She struggles to make time for her relationship with her teenage daughter, Allegra, and the two have become practically strangers to each other. When Allegra hangs out with a new crowd and is arrested for drug possession, Francesca gives in to her mother’s wish that they take one epic summer vacation to trace their family roots in Italy. She just never expected to face a choice that might change the course of her life. . .
Allegra wants to make her grandmother happy, but she hates the idea of forced time with her mother and vows to fight every step of the ridiculous tour, until a young man on the verge of priesthood begins to show her the power of acceptance, healing, and the heartbreaking complications of love.
Sophia knows her girls are in trouble. A summer filled with the possibility for change is what they all desperately need. Among the ruins of ancient Rome, the small churches of Assisi, and the rolling hills of Tuscany, Sophia hopes to show her girls that the bonds of family are everything, and to remind them that they can always lean on one another, before it’s too late.
No excerpt available.
