Sunflower Publishing Book Reviews

When the Mountains Dance  by Christine Toomey   SUMMARY: Love, loss and hope in the heart of Italy ‘In the wake of the strongest earthquake in Italy for nearly forty years and the many aftershocks that followed, Italians began speaking of the earth beneath our feet as la terra ballerina, the dancing earth. The dance they spoke of was unrelenting.’ Foreign correspondent Christine Toomey spent years renovating her glorious, long-abandoned hill-top home in Le Marche, Italy, as a haven of rest from covering crises around the world. But in 2016, the peace and beauty of this beloved landscape were thrown into chaos when a series of powerful earthquakes struck the heart of the Apennines. Wracked with grief for a place still reverberating with seismic aftershocks, Christine decided that one way of preserving the community was to tell its history. Fuelled by the artefacts uncovered in her attic - including oil paintings and lithographs, a map, thick with dust but showing deta...

    In the Shadows of the Apennines by Kimberly Sullivan SUMMARY: The sleepy little Abruzzo mountain town of Marsicano seems about as far as Samantha can flee from her failed marriage and disastrous university career. Eager for a fresh start, Samantha begins to set down roots in her Italian mountain hideaway. At first, the mountain retreat appears idyllic, but an outsider’s clumsy attempts at breaking into the closed mountain community are quickly thwarted when the residents discover Samantha’s snarky blog ridiculing the town and its inhabitants. Increasingly isolated in her mountain cottage, Samantha discovers the letters and diaries of Elena, a past tenant and a survivor of the 1915 Pescina earthquake. Despite the fact that a  century separates the two women, Samantha feels increasingly drawn into Elena’s life, and discovers startling parallels with her own. MY REVIEW: T his is an intriguing and absorbing story about how someone from the past rescues someone...

    Home to Italy By Peter Pezzelli SUMMARY: When her father's best friend returns to Abruzzo, Lucrezia, a beautiful widow, finds herself drawn to this handsome American who is also haunted by tragedy, and together they embark on a passionate relationship that heals the pain of the past and gives them both a second chance at love. In this delightful, moving novel, Peter Pezzelli brings to life the earthy sensuality of Italy's Abruzzo region— the smell of just-baked bread wafting through the village piazza; the shopkeepers sweeping the sidewalks first thing in the morning; groups of cyclists dotting the mountain roads—and spins a story of May-December romance as sharp and delicious as the olives of Villa San Giuseppe .   MY REVIEW: This is a lovely, easy read and feel-good book. The perfect read for anyone seeking an escape to the Italian countryside. It is a story about the trials and tribulations of life. Marriage, love, work, friends and family. Sometimes...

  The Case of the Sleeping Beauty By Richard Walmsley SUMMARY I nspector Beppe Stancato, driven from his native Calabria by threats from his local mafia, finds himself appointed commissario in the town of Pescara, in Abruzzo, just prior to the earthquake which struck the mountain capital city of L'Aquila in 2009. The unexpected discovery of a twenty-two year old girl, lying drugged and unconscious, sparks off a complex investigation involving a seismologist accused of manslaughter and a fugitive mafia boss suspected of involvement in illegal building contracts. The girl is soon nicknamed "The Sleeping Beauty" by the investigating team - reflecting the locals' name for the Gran Sasso mountain range, uncannily reminiscent of the prone figure of a sleeping woman. Beppe is faced with the task of saving the girl whilst outwitting the crooked seismologist and the wily Mafioso. His own personal life is anything but straightforward. Will he be able to live up to the expectati...