Review: A Portrait of Emily Price by Katherine Reay

A Portrait of Emily Price by Katherine Reay

Blurb from Goodreads:

Art restorer Emily Price has never encountered anything she can’t fix—until she meets Ben, an Italian chef, who seems just right. But when Emily follows Ben home to Italy, she learns that his family is another matter . . .

Emily Price—fix-it girl extraordinaire and would-be artist—dreams of having a gallery show of her own. There is no time for distractions, especially not the ultimate distraction of falling in love.

But Chef Benito Vassallo’s relentless pursuit proves hard to resist. Visiting from Italy, Ben works to breathe new life into his aunt and uncle’s faded restaurant, Piccollo. Soon after their first meeting, he works to win Emily as well—inviting her into his world and into his heart.

Emily astonishes everyone when she accepts Ben’s proposal and follows him home. But instead of allowing the land, culture, and people of Monterello to transform her, Emily interferes with everyone and everything around her, alienating Ben’s tightly knit family. Only Ben’s father, Lucio, gives Emily the understanding she needs to lay down her guard. Soon, Emily’s life and art begin to blossom, and Italy’s beauty and rhythm take hold of her spirit.

Yet when she unearths long-buried family secrets, Emily wonders if she really fits into Ben’s world. Will the joys of Italy become just a memory, or will Emily share in the freedom and grace that her life with Ben has shown her are possible?

My Review:
 

Two things I can say about all of Katherine Reay's books - I always devour them and I always love love love her heroines. I'm happy to report that A Portrait of Emily Price is no different!  What I loved about this book was how it captured that sense of freefall from A Portrait of the Artist as Young Man but in a modern way and with a woman as the protagonist.  This wasn't a re-telling but the allusion cannot be missed -- the struggle of the artist and the mixed emotions.  This was set between Atlanta and Italy (in the country, outside Florence) and both were lovely.  My only qualm was a bit of the ending -- there were parts I really liked but the build-up was not my favorite. Obviously, uncovering a family's deeply protected secret is usually not nice or good but it felt extra out of place here.  Still, I liked this one a lot and have come to anxiously await each of this author's releases.

A Portrait of Emily Price comes out tomorrow on November 1, 2016 and you can purchase HERE. I definitely recommend this one if you like contemporary women's fiction that is a bit of a spin on a classic (here, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, one of my favorites).  I have loved all of this author's works so far!

It was at night Ben and I found each other. He'd crawl into bed beside me and drag me back against his chest, and I'd whisper the same question into the darkness, "How was your day?"