The Relentless Italian (Relentless #2)

Sarina
Rose
Genre: 
Other

WOMEN'S FICTION:  It is 1965 and college student Sophie Carrieri is determined to fulfill her life-long dream of going to Cornell graduate school and becoming a veterinarian.  All her plans come to a standstill, however, when she meets sexy Tony Andrisoi. Tony also attends college but has a burgeoning music career in his homeland of Italy, so divides his time between the two countries.  

 

Tony falls hard and fast for Sophie and wants nothing more than to build a life with her in Italy but, although Sophie is just as smitten, she refuses to give up her dreams to become Tony’s wife.  Can love endure four years apart while Sophie trains to be a veterinarian and Tony rises in the music industry, or will temptation interfere and lead them in different paths?

 

The mid-60s background of the sexual revolution is a perfect setting for this tale of love across the continents!  One can truly understand the dilemma of strict dictates and traditions juxtaposed against new ideas and possibilities.  The problem comes in the actual writing and sentence structure employed to tell this tale.  It reads as if an Italian-speaker is writing in a language they are not quite comfortable with.  The syntax is all over the place, leaving words in improper order, or punctuation etc.  Frequently sentences such as “(T)he pit of my insides ignites into a fire not even an ocean cannot quench” require multiple readings to understand.  The love story is beautiful, if it weren’t so hard to decipher!

 

Ruth Lynn Ritter