At Least You're in Tuscany..

I've been meaning to do a book review for a little while now so I am happy to see today's Blogtember! prompt. It is as follows: Review a book, place or product.

A month or so ago I learned about NetGalley. Have you heard of it? If you love to read books on your kindle/iPad/e-reader, but get annoyed at having to pay money to read then look this site up! You can request books from all sorts of authors. They either deny or allow you to download and read their books. It's a good idea to fluff up your profile and mention things that a publisher would like to hear. Tell them you'll do a review on your blog or review it on Amazon.com. I'm not very quick on my reviews, but I still do them. The first NetGalley book I read was so-so. I ended up only doing a review on Amazon. I liked the book I'm about to review more than the last one so I figured it was deserving of a blog post :-)

At Least You're in Tuscany is a story of a real life attorney turned writer who up and leaves her life in New York city, packs up a few belongings, her dog and heads to start a new life in Tuscany. The book chronicles the ups and downs (a lot of downs!) of what it entails to move to an entirely foreign country that speaks a different language than you, and has different customs and traditions. What I loved the most about this book (besides her way of writing) was the lack of sugar coating what was really occurring while she was on this adventure. I think it would be very easy for her to make up a beautiful story about how she lived in a cute little cottage, fell in love with an amazing Italian stallion, and lived happily ever after. I appreciate the honesty and reality of her situation. She had struggles. It took Jennifer a long time to secure employment, and part of that was the difficulty with getting her citizenship in order. She found romance, but realized it wasn't the kind she wanted. She had to patiently wait and work hard to sharpen her Italian language skills. I felt as if I could relate to some of the things she was going through. Those make for the best books.

There were at times some slow moments, and I did struggle with not finishing it as fast as I wanted to, but as I mentioned-this was a true story. There was no hyping it up to make the story better to try and get more readers. It has always been a dream of mine to visit Tuscany so that was what drew me to this book in the first place. In reading this, I definitely still plan on making it to Tuscany one day. 

Even if this book doesn't interest you, still go check out NetGalley. It's pretty stinkin awesome to be able to score free books to read.