Review: Flirting In Italian by Lauren Hendersen

Book: Flirting In Italian by Lauren Hendersen (Flirting In Italian #1)
Published by Delacourt Press, June, 12 2012
329 pages
Format: E-ARC
Genre: Contemporary YA
I received this book from the publisher via Netgalley
Synopsis via Goodreads: Four girls. One magical and possibly dangerous Italian summer. Family mysteries, ancient castles, long hot nights of dancing under the stars . . . and, of course, plenty of gorgeous Italian boys!


         
 I was really looking forward to this book and was delighted when my request was accepted.  The prologue had me very interested, but as the book went on, I became less sure about how I felt about it.

            Initially, I really liked that Violet was smart and driven; the fact that she was also British had me loving her even more. I have a love affair with all things British. As the story progressed I was very disappointed by not only a major deviation from what I thought the story would be because of the prologue but that Violet was not only suddenly very shallow, but boy crazy.

            One thing that I couldn’t get past was that there was so much girl on girl hate. For part of the novel it was British girls vs. American girls (and not a very flattering view of Americans in my opinion) but then “Brits and Yanks” joined forces and suddenly became semi-friendly because there was yet a meaner girl to hate.

            Despite my issues with the novel, I couldn’t tear myself away from it. Though it wasn’t initially what I had hoped, the plot that I got was rather interesting. There was this whole mysterious “whodunit” element to it. I liked that ever though there was some danger and there were clues, it was still hard to figure out who was behind it all. I thought that the last 30-40pgs were amazing and great set up for the next novel. Plus, I got a mini Italian lesson from reading the book; if you enjoy learning naughty words in other languages.

            Overall, though I think the book had some flaws, I did like it enough in the end that I would like to read the next book in the series. I would like to see how the next novel brings Violet closer to her initial goals and how it could possibly progress from where it left off.