Review of Brava Valentine

Brava Valentine
Adriana Trigiani
Harper Collins
328 pages
Brava Valentine is the second in her new series featuring Valentine Roncalli and the Angelini Shoe Company. It debuted at #7 on the New York Times Best Seller List.
Welcome back to the bosom of the Roncalli’s and to the Angelini Shoe Company. We start out in Italy where gram (Teodora) is getting married, and a miracle happened, it snowed, which rarely happens in Tuscany. But the good luck stops there when Teodora announces that Valentine’s older brother and nemesis, Alfred will be partnering with her in the new era of Angelini Shoes. Life has a way of vomiting all over Valentine and this latest installation of her life under the microscope is no different. There are changes coming for Valentine, some good, some not so good.
Adriana’s second in the series of Valentine Roncalli will wow you. I think it’s even better than the first, maybe because we already know the major players and are comfortable in the knowing. Her plot for this episode of the perils of Valentine is classic family drama but it’s the way she tells it that makes it such a joy to read and experience. And you will experience it, with her unique form of entertaining and description her dialogue will effortlessly take you from the hills of Tuscany to the Island of Manhattan where she will captivate you with her amazing ability to make you laugh, cry and just simply participate in the lives of these amazing life like characters. And let’s talk about her characters, we go from the bold and the beautiful to the bizarre and from the meek to the boisterous as she intimates us to them. And it’s very obvious that she knows these people well by the way she makes them come to life for her readers. This is a love story as well as a dramatic piece of literary fiction and she handles the love scenes with finesse and charm.
This is a must read on anyone’s list who enjoys big time family spectacles, for anyone who enjoys going from tears to laughter in an instant and anyone who love well written fiction.