Book Review: Kathy gates: Juliet's Journey

Juliet's Journey

Author:  Kathy Gates

Title:  Juliet’s Journey

Genre:  Contemporary, Novella, Humor, Funny, Travel, Romance, Contemporary romance, literature and fiction, contemporary fiction, women’s fiction, woman’s writer,

Synopsis:  Juliet Carlsen is grieving the loss of her mother. Six weeks after the funeral she is about to arrive in a tiny village in northern Italy. The village, Baiardo, is home to an art school where she is to spend a month as a volunteer. Her best friend had convinced her that a change of scene would do her good but, as she nears her destination, she is not so sure: was it really necessary to travel so far out of her comfort zone?
Baiardo turns out to be her haven. The warm welcome and serene beauty work their healing magic. The attentions of a handsome local named Luca don’t hurt either. Then someone from Juliet’s past shows up and turns everything on its head.

Review:  the thing I really admire (and love) about Kathy Gates' work is her ability to transport you to a place. It's not just her knowledge of Baiardo, but also her obvious love for the village,  that infuses the story and leaves you with a desire to know it as well as she does.Ms Gates is also wonderful at creating a beautiful, diverse cast of characters. There were a lot of them, so much so that I was struggling to keep up with them all at times (although, in fairness, it was quite late at night when I decided to read it). But every one of them is wonderfully drawn, with some great idiosyncrasies. Even Stuart was someone I loved to hate - we all know people like him.It's a story about self-discovery, friendship, coming to terms with loss, love (for a place as well as people), and the triumph of small village values over the big capitalist machine. Well, it's open-ended...but in my head it's triumph!  Really good book and it was easy to get in to and l could not put it down once l started reading it and l highly recommended it to anyone and even if you are not in to this type of book it's good to read outside your favorite genre and try something new and improved your reading to different types of books and genre and authors

About the author:  Kathy Gates loves three things: walking, travel and writing. Her novels and shorts stories aim to combine all three. Born and raised in Sydney, Kathy now lives in Hobart - it's like Sydney but smaller and the food and wine is better.Kathy has a background in marketing where she enjoyed making up stories; writing novels seemed an obvious career move.

Edition:  kindle

Star rating:   5 out of 5 stars

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