Venetian Lessons in Love by Jenna Lo Bianco

 

A

Venetian Lessons in Love by Jenna Lo Bianco is like a sumptuous Italian opera: fabulous settings, tragic heroine, evil villain and mysterious but gorgeous hero. Lucia has been known to all as l’Orfana since an intrusive photographer snapped a picture of her as an eleven year old child at the scene of the horrific accident which took the lives of her parents, along with others.

Now, twenty years later, Lucia is running what was her parents’ Italian language school from her inherited palazzo on the canal in Venice with the assistance of her two trusted friends, Mariela and Francesco. All is well in Lucia’s safe, secluded though lonely life until a blow is delivered which threatens to upset her fragile sense of well being.

A romantic, melodramatic story follows: Venice is an enchanting backdrop; Lucia is beautiful, vulnerable and, at times, maddeningly stubborn in her fear and mistrust of her handsome neighbour, Alex, with his intriguing, Australian-accented Italian.

This is a book for lovers of romantic fiction and, of course, Italy. Jenna Lo Bianco has written two previous books: The Italian Marriage and Love & Rome.

Published by Pan Macmillan.