From the publisher:
An utterly delightful and surprising family drama—think Moonstruck and My Big Fat Greek Wedding set in New Jersey—about a boisterous, complicated Italian family determined to help their widowed mother find a new boyfriend.
Lively widow Varina Paladino has lived in the same house in Wyldale, New Jersey, her entire life. The town might be slightly stuck in the 1960s, when small businesses thrived and most residents were Italian, but its population is getting younger and the Paladinos are embracing the change. What Varina’s not embracing, much to her ninety-two-year-old mother’s dismay, is dating. Running Paladino’s Italian Specialties grocery, caring for her mother, and keeping her large, loud Jersey Italian family from killing one another takes up all of Varina’s energy anyway.
Sylvia Spini worries about her daughter Varina being left all alone when she dies. Sylvia knows what it is to be old and alone, so when her granddaughter, Donatella, comes to her with an ill-conceived plan to find Varina a man, Sylvia dives in. The three men of the family—Dante, Tommy, and Paulie—are each secretly plotting their own big life changes, which will throw everyone for a loop.
Three generations of Paladinos butt heads and break one another’s hearts as they wrestle with their own Jersey Italian love stories in this hilarious and life-affirming ode to love and family.
https://amzn.to/3Taf2SE
It’s been a few years since DeFino’s The Bar Harbor Retirement Home for Famous Writers (And Their Muses,) but it was worth the wait for this story of a big, boisterous Italian family, replete with New Jersey-mutated-Italian lessons.
The family includes a couple of sons, their wives, exes, and kids; Donatella’s best friend, a gay man abandoned by his Italian family and taken in by hers; and “Vicky,” the haunted record-playing Victrola. The family matriarch, Sylvia, is approaching her 93rd birthday and is worried about her widowed daughter, Varina. Together with her favorite grandchild, Donatella, the two of them cook up a scheme to attract single grandfathers looking for love as possible matches for Varina. Meanwhile, Varina books herself a secret cruise and finds a new best friend, her daughter gets a diagnosis that surprises no one, and a new baby is on the way.
Verdict: There are a lot of laughs despite the mayhem and drama, and of course, many family dinners (with recipes!) but it’s the love that permeates and elevates this terrific Italian family saga. Adriana Trigiani fans will feel right at home here. There is an older book, certainly less well known than Trigiani, and maybe even more food-centric but a good read-alike, Angelina’s Bachelors by Brian O’Reilly.
©Library Journal, 2023
2/2023 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch
VARINA PALLADINO’S JERSEY ITALIAN LOVE STORY by Terri-Lynne DeFino. William Morrow (February 14, 2023). ISBN: 978-0063228436. 416p.
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