Mini Review: Brava Valentine

Author: Adriana Trigiani
Format: audio 11 hrs, 21 min, 352 page equivalent
Subject: Women's roles, shoe making
Setting: Tuscany Italy, New York city
Series: Valentine #2
Genre: Romance
Source: public library audio download
Challenge: SYLL, Audiobooks

Blame it on my fellow staffers at the library who have been all over me that I've never read anything by Adriana Trigiani.  Now I have, and although it isn't something I'm gonna o'd on, I must admit I enjoyed it.  It was a great break from trying to read Emma, from slogging through my other book club "have-to's", and a deliciously done audio.  This is fluff with a bit of crunch to it, and I'm going to have to go back and get the prequel to this one Very Valentine lined up for my next reading funk.

Where else will you have a heroine who manages to maintain love relationships (in all variations) with three different men?  There's her life-long friend and ex-fiance Brett who is now a business adviser, but who is still a BF; her live-in 'wife' - the not overly flamboyant gay roomate Gabriel, who makes her coffee, decorates her house, and nurses her heart through the true romance Gian-Carlo - the Italian stallion who is the son of her grandmother's 2nd husband.  Her romance with GC sometimes approaches the point where you want to yell "Just get on with it will you? You're 34 years old! Make up your mind."  And then there's her brother, a fired NYC banker (it is 2010 after all) who comes to work in the family shoe business, but who is supremely unhappy, and who does not get along with Valentine at all.

Add in a long-lost cousin in Argentina, a widowed grandmother who goes off to Italy to marry at the age of 84, and you've got yourself a story.  It's fabulous, it works, it's witty and well written. There's enough angst and drama to keep it from being too sugary sweet.

Lots of fun, and if you're looking for a good, not too steamy, but sultry lip-smacking romance for the summer, try this one.