One Summer in Venice. Nicky Pellegrino

One Summer in Venice
Nicky Pellegrino
Published: Hachette Australia
Date: April 14th
Format: e-ARC
Pages: 304
Genre: Women's Fiction
Source: Publisher via NetGalley

Addolorata Martinelli knows she should be happy. She has everything she thought she wanted - her own business, a husband, a child. So why does she feel as if something is missing? Then when her restaurant, Little Italy, is slated by a reviewer, she realises that she's lost the one thing she thought she could always count on, her love of food.

So Addolorata heads to Venice for a summer alone, aiming to find the ten things that make her happy. Once she's found them, she'll construct a new life around her ten things, but will they include her life in London?

One Summer in Venice by Nicky Pellegrino was an enjoyable read.  It held my attention all the way through.  It is written in the first person so we only really get the view of Addolorata (Dolly), so it left me a little in the dark about what her husband Eden was really like and the reasons for some of his actions.

Addolorata's sister Pieta sends her off on a week's holiday to Venice when things are tumbling down round her. She works really hard and is at the moment the actual bread winner for the family as her husband is still recovering from a back injury.  He thinks Dolly is making him feel guilty and that he is not pulling his weight.  I actually didn't sympathise with him very much, perhaps I wasn't meant to as it was all from Dolly's point of view. However I still wasn't totally sold on him.

In Venice Dolly meets a number of local people who draw her into their lives.  Coco is a mysterious older woman who catches Dolly's attention for her flamboyance in dress and activities.  Later Dolly is caught up in finding out who this woman is and how she fits in with the lives of the other people that Dolly meets.

I liked the setting of the book of course!  It shows Venice from the eyes of tourists but also from the local people that live there.  The way of life, the cooking and socialising permeated this book in a way that I wanted to read every line.  The love of food was obvious.

Dolly sets out on Coco's advice to find out what really makes her happy and eventually she finds a rhythm and does just that, finally deciding by the end of the book what really makes her happy. I enjoyed her new learnings, her new wisdom, her final decisions.

This was the first book by this author I've read, I look forward to reading a few more of her previous books.