Welcome to another Friday Reads blog. This week I’m featuring the gorgeously romantic In Italy for Love, and talking to the author, Leonie Mack about the research she did for this book. So grab a cuppa, get cosy and let’s jet off to Italy! 😊
Blurb
Julia Volpe’s Italian dream has turned into a nightmare.
Still living with her ex, Luca, a year after they’ve broken up, desperate to sell the dilapidated B&B that was meant to be their future, Jules knows she needs to leave. There are just two problems. Her passport has expired and she’s broke.
Not quite ready to ask her parents for help – at the ripe old age of twenty-seven – Jules decides to head as far away from Luca as she can to work on an olive farm until she has enough money to pay for her passport and a ticket back home.
Jules has sworn off love, but she hadn’t bargained on the beauty of Cividale del Friuli, the ancient Italian town on the banks of the gloriously blue Natisone river. As the community of farmers, neighbours and locals generously welcome her into their lives, Jules can feel her defences crumbling. But it’s when she meets Alex, broodingly handsome yet charmingly gallant, that Jules truly knows she’s in trouble. Because Alex has sworn off love too, and his reasons run deep enough for him to keep his word just as Jules is starting to reconsider her resistance to romance.
Buy Link: Amazon
That cover is gorgeous, Leonie, so is the location. Did you actually go to Italy for research?
Yes I did. I’ve always been a die-hard romance reader and a keen traveller, so it’s a dream come true to now combine the two, writing destination romance! I usually aim to balance well-known destinations with some more hidden gems from off the beaten track, so I’ve written books set in Paris and Venice, but also the vineyards of the Prosecco Hills and now a far-flung corner of Italy, a small city called Cividale del Friuli.
I visited Cividale in November last year, which was perfect timing as the book is set in autumn, around the olive harvest. As I grew up in Australia, I love historic architecture and I’d heard Cividale was really something special – and it didn’t disappoint. The mediaeval town plan is still evident (narrow, cobbled streets that are easy to get lost in), many of the buildings have centuries-old frescoes and there are some Venetian touches from when the town was part of the Republic of Venice. But the town is even older than that, as it was established under Julius Caesar and flourished as an important centre under the Lombards, a viking-like people who subdued northern Italy after the Romans retreated. There is even some Lombard architecture from the 8th century still standing and they certainly appear more advanced than the mediaeval society that followed.
But as much as I love a mediaeval town, when I arrived for my research trip, it was the river that captivated me most – and the forested hills and the Friulian plain. Friuli sits between the Alps and the Adriatic, with rivers fed from the mountains and the full extremes of weather. In autumn it was nothing short of stunning, the hills in their coloured finery and the river a stunning turquoise. What I’d thought would be a book steeped in history and architecture, became a story about learning to appreciate the natural world in the autumn.
Our main character Jules chooses Friuli because she’s escaping a failed relationship and business venture and it’s as far away as she can go, keen only to conserve her money for a few weeks and then go home to Australia. But instead of a bolt-hole in the middle of nowhere, she finds invigorating challenges, new skills and eventually friendship and love – that make her plan to leave that much more difficult to stick to. There are olives and chestnuts, wine, cheese and hearty rustic dishes, a lively dog and a snobbish cat, several accordions and one rather special accordion player…
It sounds fantastic! Thanks so much for dropping by to talk to us about it. I hope your book flies!
Meet Leonie Mack
Author bio
After leaving Australia ‘for a year’ in 2006, Leonie never went home and now travels across Europe jotting down love stories wherever she goes. She has a degree in languages and is an expert at taking public transport and travelling under her own steam on foot or by bike. ‘Home’ is now in central Germany, in the vineyards along the Main river, where she spends her time writing happy endings in English and speaking German with bad grammar.
Contact links
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leoniejmack/
Facebook: www.facebook.com/leoniejmack
Newsletter sign-up: https://bit.ly/LeonieMackNewsletter
Karen King 