Ebook: 330 pages
Genre: Contemporary Romantic Fiction
Publisher: June 2025 by Transworld
Source: NetGalley
First Sentences: You have arrived at your destination. Make a U-turn. Turn left. Make a U-turn. Turn right. You have arrived at your destination.
Review Quote: Full of warmth, humour, food and family. This cannot fail to lift your spirits. ― Katie Fforde
My Opinion:
I was given the opportunity to read ' A Place in the Sun' and being an Italophile it appealed to me. Coincidentally during the time I was reading this novel I heard Jo Thomas interviewed on the radio. It was interesting to hear how she draws on life experiences whilst writing and she gave some examples used in this most recent novel.
A young widow, Thea and her two children travel to Italy for the school summer holidays to renovate and sell a property belonging to them, in a Tuscan village. They quickly find themselves drawn into the community life of this small village. There is heartbreak for the family but along with that comes the heart warming way that the locals accept them.
A gentle romantic read with realistic characters that will definitely appeal to lovers of Italy and its food.
With thanks to NetGalley, Transworld and Jo Thomas for the opportunity to read and review.
Précis Courtesy of Goodreads:
It's never too late to find where you belong...
Thea knew the holiday house her late husband Marco bought in Tuscany wasn't pristine. But when she relocates to Italy for the summer with her children, she's shocked by how much work Casa Luna needs. And she only has six weeks to fix it up ready to sell! Her only option is to ask the tight-knit Italian community for help.
In return, Thea and her children become involved in the community kitchen, working alongside handsome chef Giovanni and three very competitive nonnas. Gradually, Thea begins to open up to the people around her for the first time in a long while. But just as she's beginning to wonder whether this small Tuscan town could become a new place to call home, a surprise visitor turns everything on its head . . .
Author Profile:
In her own words from her Website
I’m Jo Thomas and I write romantic fiction about food and love.
I’m not a chef, a farmer or even an enthusiastic amateur foodie with fancy knives, whizzy kitchen equipment and complicated recipes. I just love plain, simple, good quality food, made with love. I love the way food connects us and brings us all around the same table.
When I visit somewhere new, I’m fascinated how the food of an area can take me by the hand and lead me into the place’s history, its culture and introduce me to its people and customs.
When I first visited Galway and sat in a small restaurant at the end terrace of a row of fisherman’s cottages, looking out of a small window, light by candlelight, the moon came out and shone silver streak across Galway bay. That night I sat there and ate a plate of oysters with shallot and red wine dressing and discovered more about the oyster beds and the oyster festivals of the area and realised I had discovered the life blood of the place, its DNA and that I had to write about it in The Oyster Catcher.
Writing my second book The Olive Branch I visited one of my favourite restaurants. It’s set in the middle of a family-owned olive grove in Puglia in southern Italy, where everything is grown on the land and cooked on a big open fire: the forno. At the end of our meal the owner, Giuseppe, brought over a bottle of homemade limoncello and sat with us. He put down the bottle and poured us drinks. He asked me what kind of books I wrote. He didn’t speak English and I didn’t speak Italian. I told him I wrote about food and love. He told me life for him was all about the food that he grew on the land, to cook in the kitchen, to put on the table, and he slapped his hand on the scrubbed wooden worn table, for the people we love and he held his hand over his heart in the middle of his chest. And that, I agreed, is what I write about, the stories I tell, from the land, to the table for the ones we love.
Photographs, Trailer and Biographical Information courtesy of the following sites:
Amazon Author Page Instagram Profile. Author Official Website. Facebook Profile
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