Rowena’s review of Flirting in Italian (Flirting in Italian #1) by Lauren Henderson.
Main Character: Violet
Love Interest: Luca
Series: Violet Books #1
Author: Facebook|Twitter|Goodreads
Four girls. One magical, and possibly dangerous Italian summer. Family mysteries, ancient castles, long hot nights of dancing under the stars . . . and, of course, plenty of gorgeous Italian boys!
I wanted to read this book because it looked like it’d be a cute summer reads (and I love me some summer reads) and while I enjoyed the book, I didn’t exactly love it. The book starts off with our main character, Violet looking at a painting in a museum of a young lady who is the spitting image of…her. She’s always wondered why she doesn’t look like anyone in her family and more than once, she’s thought she was adopted but couldn’t figure out why her parents would not tell her something like that. When she sees this painting, she decides that she’s going to get some answers on her own.
Violet is seventeen, finds a summer finishing school type of course in Italy and enrolls herself in it. This is the perfect course for her to take since it’s next door to the castle that the painting is from and she’ll be able to get away from her nosy Mom and get some answers on her own about who she really is and where she really comes from.
Her mother is Scandinavian with blonde hair and blue eyes and her father is Scottish with bright red hair and light eyes. Violet has more Mediterranean looks and doesn’t look at all like their kid so it’s understandable that she’d want to get some answers.
Once she gets to Italy, she meets the other three girls who will be attending the summer course with her. There are two Americans, Paige and Kendra and then there’s a brainiac from England named Kelly. Seeing these girls get closer and closer together over the course of the summer was nice.
My main gripe with this story was the romance that pops up between Violet and Italian Stallion Luca. The push and pull that was going on between these two got on my nerves from time to time. They played too many games with each other and I wasn’t really a fan. To me, Luca came off as a dick most of the time and that surprised me since I’m pretty easy to please where the love interest is concerned. Even at the end when Luca saves Violet, I still thought he was a jerk. I guess, I didn’t see what Violet saw in him aside from his good looks. On the other note, I didn’t see what Luca saw in Violet either. I just didn’t think she was a very memorable character and her attitude was hard to take at times.
I enjoyed getting to know Paige, Kendra and Kelly. My favorite of the bunch being Kelly. Her smarts and the concern she showed toward Violet was cute and I loved her loyalty. Paige and her party girl personality was a bit much to take at times and every time she got drunk, I wanted to smack her for being so out of control and irresponsible in a foreign country. Kendra and her “I have to be smarter than everyone” attitude was a bit much to take at times as well. Her personality was more reserved than the others and I just couldn’t really care for her.
Overall, this book was good but it’s not a book that I can confidently recommend because there will definitely be other people that enjoy this book than I did but it wasn’t a bad book. I just didn’t connect with the characters as much as I had hoped I would and was a bit disappointed with the ending, nothing is really resolved in this book and it ends most abruptly but because there’s another book coming out soon, I breathed a sigh of relief. Will I read the next book? Most likely since I am curious to see what happens after this.
So my final thoughts on this book is this: This book is a good book with a great premise but it didn’t knock my socks off.
..and that’s your scoop!
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Book cover and blurb credit: http://barnesandnoble.com
