The Summer Villa by Melissa Hill

The Summer Villa by Melissa Hill
Published by MIRA Books ISBN 9780778359982
Trade paperback, $16.99, 384 pages

We all may be stuck in our own homes, but you can visit the beautiful Amalfi Coast in Melissa Hill's latest novel, The Summer Villa. Told in two separate timelines, we meet three young women who are all running away from their homes to stay at Villa Dolce Vita, a small, rather run-down vacation rental in Positano.

Kim is a 30 year-old American woman whose wealthy parents expect her to go to London and marry herself off to a man she doesn't even know to help their business prospects. When Kim refuses, she secretly runs away and ends up at Villa Dolce Vita. There she meets two other young ladies, Colette and Annie.

Colette is taking a well-deserved vacation after running her family's bakery in England after her father deserts the family while his wife fights breast cancer. Annie is an Irish hair stylist who receives this trip from one of her customers when the woman passes away.

Annie is a party girl, and she spends her nights out at the local bars, where she meets a handsome British man and thinks he may be the one. Colette is a sweet young woman who is a little imtimidated by her gorgeous roommates, but when she meets a handsome Italian man who woos her, Annie and Colette are a little surprised and envious.

While spending her days at the pool sunning herself and trying to figure out what she will do with her life, Kim finds a journal filled with affirmations and quotes that speak to her. She begins to take stunning photos of Positano and capture them with these affirmations, and when she posts them on Instagram, they go viral.

Years later, Kim has turned her Instagram posts into a mindfullness book, and she buys Villa Dolce Vita and creates a spa and wellness retreat there. As she prepares for the grand opening, she is struggling with the feeling that she cannot bond with her young daughter, and that her husband will discover this. It also appears that someone is trying to sabotage her grand opening.

Colette is married and dealing with infertility. Her husband is consumed with work and tries to talk her out of going to Positano for Kim's grand opening.  Annie is a single mom who now owns a successful hair salon, and while she is going to the grand opening, something is bothering her about seeing her old friends again.

Each woman is struggling with issues that many women can relate to in the current timeline, and it all comes to a head at the grand opening. There are secrets that come out, and I admit that I was taken by complete surprise, which I enjoyed. Hill skillfully puts all the pieces together and creates a novel that keeps the reader guessing, and as someone who has visited Positano, I was happy to revisit it in this  captivating novel.  If you want to escape to a beautiful place for a few hours, pick up The Summer Villa. Fans of Liane Moriarty's novels will enjoy this one.

Thanks to Harlequin for putting me on Melissa Hill's tour.

Friday 5ive- April 24, 2020

Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a weekly blog post about five things that caught my attention during the week. In my quest to work on a small project a day, today's task was finding a place for a set of golf clubs and a new golf push cart. In a small NYC apartment that was a challenge, but hey, I have a lot of time on my hands, right?


1)  Even though the weather has been colder than usual for April, we do have signs of spring. We took a walk on Sunday and found some welcome sights of lovely flowers to brighten our day.

2)  The only place I go to on a regular basis is the laundry room in our building. I go at 6:45am and I'm the only there. Items that have been found in the machines are tacked up on a bulletin board. This week I saw this tacked up on there and have to wonder if the person who lost their "Here Comes The Madness" underwear will ever claim it. It's been a week and so far no takers. At least it give us all a well-needed chuckle.  

3) We are all starved for live musical entertainment so it was great to watch a concert that was filmed in January before we all had to social distance from each other. CBS televised Let's Go Grazy: A Grammy Salute to Prince and it was fantastic. They had great performances from  H.E.R and Gary Clark Jr. (Let's Go Crazy), Sheila E (The Glamorous Life), Beck (Raspberry Beret), Princess, featuring Maya Rudolph, (Delirious) and the great Mavis Staples with the Revolution (Purple Rain). The best concert I ever saw was Prince during his Purple Rain tour, and who can forget his Super Bowl concert when he played in the pouring rain? If you missed it, the link is here. Be prepared to dance. 

4) I'm missing getting to attend book signings and hearing authors talk about their books, and this week I watched two Facebook Lives with Adriana Trigiani talking to Erik Larson about his Winston Churchill book, The Splendid and the Vile, and Colum McCann speaking about his novel Apeirogon, about two fathers, one Israeli and one Palestinian, who each lost a daughter. Both discussions were so fascinating and made me immediately go online to a local indie bookseller to order both books. If you like smart, interesting conversations about a wide range of topics, go to Adriana Trigiani's Facebook page here and watch them. Erik Larson here, and Colum McCann here. 

5) I read three books this week. Melissa Hill's The Summer Villa, about three young women who meet when they share a vacation villa in Positano, Italy. It will take you away and there were a few interesting twists that I didn't see coming. I enjoy being surprised. My full review posts Monday. 

The Secrets of Love Story Bridge is a wonderful novel by Phaedra Patrick about a lonely young widower with a 10 year-old daughter who rescues a woman who fell off a bridge. When the woman disappears after that, he becomes involved with the family in trying to help find her. I enjoyed Patrick's The Library of Lost and Found, and this one was just as good. She writes lonely people so well. My full review publishes next Wednesday. 

I also read an early review copy of Curtis Sittenfeld's novel Rodham, which poses the question what if Hillary Rodham never married Bill Clinton? It's an intriguing concept, and I liked the last half of the story better than the first. Sittenfeld also wrote American Wife, which was a fictionalized account of the life of a woman very similiar to Laura Bush. I'm curious to know why Sittenfeld didn't use a fictional character to represent Hillary Clinton, as she did with Laura Bush. You have to remember that this is fiction, not nonfiction, although she weaves in many factual events into the book in a clever manner. My full review will post soon.

I hope you all stay safe, stay healthy and stay home.