A Thousand Days in Venice by Marlena de Blasi

 

 

From Goodreads

 

When Fernando spots her in a Venice cafe and knows immediately that she is The One, Marlena de Blasi is caught off guard. A divorced American woman travelling through Italy, she thought she was satisfied with her life. Yet within a few months, she has left her job as a chef, sold her house, kissed her two grown-up kids goodbye and moved to Venice. Once there, she finds herself sitting in sugar-scented pasticcerie, strolling through 16th-century palazzi, renovating an apartment overlooking the seductive Adriatic Sea and preparing to wed a virtual stranger in an ancient stone church.

My thoughts

5/10 from me. This is not a book that I would have picked up voluntarily. It was a recent read for my local Library reading group and wasn't met with that much enthusiasm from any of us.

I was looking forward to it in some ways as Venice is a place I'd like to visit at some point in the future. I enjoyed the location that the book was set in and thought that the Author of this non fiction book captured that quite well. What I wasn't too keen on was the way the Author portrayed part of the book as narrative and to me it made the book read more as fiction than non fiction.

I found myself skipping all the recipes and didn't find that they added anything at all to the book.

I wasn't keen on how the Author appeared to call her partner/fiance 'Stranger' most of the time. To be honest it wasn't for me at all and I won't be in a rush to read anymore by her.