Hanna has a foodie’s dream job: as a culinary
journalist, she gets to travel across Europe to write up the
Continent’s finest restaurants. But after penning a scathing review of a
restaurant nestled in a Tuscan apricot grove, her boss informs her of a
big problem: when the restaurant’s owner read the article, she keeled
over dead from a heart attack. Now the owner’s grandson, Fabrizio, has
filed a lawsuit against the magazine, and if Hanna can’t convince him to
drop the case, she’ll lose her job.
Determined to keep her career off the chopping block, Hanna returns to the restaurant to apologize. But upon her arrival, she finds that the little old lady’s death has created more than just the usual grief, since Granny’s will stipulates that Fabrizio will inherit the restaurant if—and only if—he’s married. With time running out for them both, the young man offers a crazy deal: he’ll drop the lawsuit if Hanna agrees to be his bride. As things heat up in and out of the kitchen, the two wonder: Could Granny’s scheme turn out to be a recipe for romance?
Determined to keep her career off the chopping block, Hanna returns to the restaurant to apologize. But upon her arrival, she finds that the little old lady’s death has created more than just the usual grief, since Granny’s will stipulates that Fabrizio will inherit the restaurant if—and only if—he’s married. With time running out for them both, the young man offers a crazy deal: he’ll drop the lawsuit if Hanna agrees to be his bride. As things heat up in and out of the kitchen, the two wonder: Could Granny’s scheme turn out to be a recipe for romance?
Genre: contemporary romance
Publishing date: December 2015
Mature content: no
Review: Apricot
Kisses is a fun, clean, heartwarming romance, and while in some places it will
make you laugh out loud, deep down in contains an important lesson on why
everything in life happens for a reason.
Hanna is an
half German-half Italian food critic that’s been fooling herself for quite some
time that she has everything in life she really needs. Fabrizio is an Italian man
haunted by the responsibility of managing his family’s crumbling estate, their
restaurant and hotel and apricot orchard. They meet by chance, over the ashes
of Fabrizio’s dead grandmother (literally), but their destinies are more
intertwined than you could ever guess. From then onwards, their lives will
never be the same.
Add to this
one manipulating Italian grandmother (that dies right at the beginning of the
book but whose legacy lives on right until the epilogue), one crazy Italian
family and one ever crazier little Italian village, where the mailman is also
the bank manager and the mayor, and where every single detain of one’s life is
a public affair.
I almost
balked at reading this book when I saw that it was written in the first person.
For some reason that I can’t really explain, this is a small detail that
usually bothers me in books. I very much prefer to have the story told from an
impersonal point of view. But in the
case of Apricot Kisses, the personal touch certainly works. The story is told
from two alternating points of view (Hanna’s and Fabrizio’s), and through their
eyes we see all the plot unfold.
All in all, I enjoyed it immensely. It was my first book by Claudia Winter, but it certainly will not be my last as long as I can find her other books translated into English (because all the other editions that seem to be available at Amazon right now are in German...).
It's a wonderful summer read and I recommend it!
Happy readings,
This sounds adorable! I totally want to read it! Thanks for sharing this at the Booknificent Thursday link-up on Mommynificent.com this week!
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