The Lovers’ Guide to Rome, a review by Joanna

Art student Alice decides to embrace spontaneity and travel to Italy for her summer break – then her safe but boring boyfriend decides he will join her so they can get engaged. Arriving ahead of him, she meets a group of young Englishmen and is thrown together by circumstance with the nicest of them, Augustus. Middle-aged Meg and Alec have flown to Rome on a frivolous home renovation mission, but each hopes that the City of Love will repair the fractures in their marriage. And Constance is visiting Rome with her husband Henry – or at least his ashes, to finally say Goodbye – and answer the question which has plagued her for twenty years.

Unusually this is told from the POV of an unspecified Roman spirit – not a ghost, but a sort of disembodied Cupid. I’m not sure this worked as there ended up being too many plot threads for a short book, and the character development suffered as a result. Meg and Constance are both awful – and don’t really get a chance to redeem themselves. August and Alec are so dull, and Alice and Lizzie are annoying. I did like the way the connections between them are revealed but found the character arcs a bit disappointing – and I didn’t like the casual way that infidelity is just brushed aside. It’s an okay read and the architectural and historical details were interesting, but I won’t be in a rush to read more from this author.