Sarah-Kate Lynch, Dolci di Love

Dolci di Love

Sarah-Kate Lynch

Plume, Mar 29 2011, $15.00

ISBN: 9780452296756

In New York, business executive Lily Turner is stunned when she finds a photograph of a beautiful woman and two children. She concludes her perfect husband Daniel has a second family tucked away in Tuscany while she is childless.

Determined to confront Daniel and fueled by alcohol, Lily uses the internet to ascertain that Daniel's secret other life is in Montevedova, Tuscany. She flies to Italy to confront her bigamist spouse. In Tuscan, the elderly sisters Violetta and Luciana give her a room above the bakery while also involving their peers in the Secret League of Widowed Darners who knit broken hearts with Lily their new client unbeknownst to the American. They feel she is perfect for Widower Alessandro who needs a good woman to mend his hurting heart. While failing to find Daniel, she meets his six years old daughter and easily falls in love with the child as if she was her mother and finds herself relishing a longer stay in Tuscany.

This is a warm how to mend a broken heart (Bee-Gees) contemporary tale that stars a hurt New Yorker and a strong Tuscan ensemble cast; ironically Daniel is off page more than on as he and his wife encounter one another late into the story line. Although an urbanite turning into a "rustic" has been used often, (see Summer in Tuscany by Elizabeth Adler starring a New Yorker), fans will enjoy this charming novel as the smell of the bakery fills the pages.

Harriet Klausner