A vivid but uneven tour celebrating the splendors of Italy and its people.
This fictional travelogue presents two modern-day Brooklynites experiencing the wonders of Italy on their honeymoon, along with commentary by an omniscient writer and a deceased relative.
Gregory’s book begins with the first-person narrative of Nina, “long gone from this earthly world.” She is the grandmother of one of the honeymooners (“If I can pull the strings of fate just a little, they will soon be on their way to Italy to see all its beautiful treasures. I will watch over them, and maybe push a little in this or that direction all during their adventure”). Nina has also “asked this writer to help me describe Italy—you know, there is so much beauty, history...so many stories and people who changed the world.” The novel then shifts to Brooklyn, where Bobby, who has a pending job offer, proposes to Lisa, a graduate student studying resilience. She is Nina’s granddaughter. The narrative then jumps six months, with the couple on their honeymoon in Italy. Their itinerary (included as a frontmatter map in the book) encompasses Milan, Venice, Florence, Rome, Palermo, and many stops in between. They marvel at Italy’s art, food, and music and interact with strangers as well as a cousin and a couple of friends. By trip’s end, Bobby receives his job offer via text, and Lisa decides to focus her resilience studies on Italians. They return home, vowing to go back for visits and possibly to live full time in Italy someday. Gregory fits an impressive amount of information about Italy into this narrative, which will be an enjoyable way for many readers to access this data versus delving into guidebooks or history texts. In Venice, “Bobby’s heart jumps at the sight of the San Simeone Piccolo across the water, a commanding eighteenth-century church with long steps, a massive green dome, and a templelike entrance supported by Corinthian columns.” But the fictional plot feels a bit thin given the emphasis on the country’s rich, evocative details, with the couple, Nina, and “the writer” largely serving to comment on or exclaim over an admittedly vibrant and captivating array of facts.
A vivid but uneven tour celebrating the splendors of Italy and its people.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2022
ISBN: 9781947431539
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Mentoris Project
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A powerfully strong romance for readers who like their love stories full of torment and passion.
Best friends confront feelings for each other when they take a honeymoon trip together.
Francesca Gardiner and George Saint James have always been best friends—just like Jo and Laurie from Little Women, which they both love. Frankie has a big, complicated family and George was the boy next door who’d moved in with his eccentric grandmother. Their friendship survived childhood, awkward teenage years, and living together as young adults without ever venturing into the romantic—well, except for one kiss, but they don’t talk about that. When Frankie gets engaged to an older professor named Nate, George isn’t happy and a huge fight ensues. Despite his misgivings, George shows up to be her best man, but Nate leaves Frankie right before the wedding with only a cryptic letter. Devastated, Frankie goes to a friend’s house to recuperate, but her honeymoon is already planned and paid for—so she decides to travel to Tofino, a picturesque town on the coast of Vancouver Island, with George taking Nate’s place. Frankie wants to fix her friendship with George, but now that they’re in a romantic suite in a beautiful location, things are more complicated than ever. She’d always thought a relationship would be a bad idea, but she’s slowly beginning to realize they’ll never be able to go back to being kids. Maybe the only way forward involves forging a new kind of relationship. Fortune, the author of romances like This Summer Will Be Different (2024), returns with another love story full of longing and intense angst. The many allusions to Little Women are charming, and Frankie is a delightfully headstrong, feisty character. She and George have explosive chemistry, and Fortune manages to make the “will-they-or-won’t-they” nature of their relationship feel like life-or-death stakes.
A powerfully strong romance for readers who like their love stories full of torment and passion.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9780593953242
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fun, positively frothy friends-to-lovers romance.
While on her sister’s wedding cruise, a woman enlists her childhood best friend for help as she attempts to woo her longtime crush.
JoJo Burton is bad at love. After she leaves her terrible fiancé, Pearce Richmond, at the altar, she’s convinced she might never settle down. But during her sister’s wedding, which is being held on an eight-day cruise to the Bahamas and Cozumel, she and her family concoct a plan that will help her seduce her recently divorced childhood crush, Finn Turner. The two of them once shared a blindfolded kiss that might have ruined JoJo for all other men, and she’s never forgotten it. But then JoJo’s best friend, Cooper Watts, shows up. Cooper and JoJo were inseparable as children but didn’t talk for years after she got engaged to Pearce. She doesn’t know why he suddenly disappeared on her, but it doesn’t matter—he’s here now, and she needs him to help her get Finn to reenact that long-ago kiss. But after she and Cooper share a cabin, get thrown together for every wedding week activity, and even engage in the classic friendly flirting meant to make another man jealous, JoJo starts to realize that Finn might not be the man she’s been waiting for, after all. Center keeps things light, focusing on humor even when the subject matter veers into family drama. JoJo and Cooper find themselves caught up in the sort of tropes that are catnip for romance fans—he takes care of her when she has a sunburn, for instance, and they participate in a slow-dance contest. As Center reveals in an author’s note at the beginning, “Spoiler: This book will end well.” The destination may not be a surprise, but the journey is a delight.
A fun, positively frothy friends-to-lovers romance.Pub Date: May 19, 2026
ISBN: 9781250408051
Page Count: 336
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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