Dolci di Love

Sarah-Kate Lynch
Harper Collins - $39.99

I am not at all surprised to learn that already this new novel is riding high on NZ bestseller lists. It is another gem from one of our most popular writers. It is a delight, an absolute delight.
It is the story of a New York couple, Lily and Daniel, whose long marriage is now under threat as a result of a passing infidelity that happened some years ago but only now has come to light. It starts in Manhattan where the couple live but soon the action moves to Tuscany from where Daniel imports wine to the US.
Although the underlying theme is a serious one Lynch manages to make me laugh on almost every page. This is one of her huge skills, a feature of all of her novels to date.
This is a story that Lynch says herself "is about mending broken hearts", a story I found warm and witty, sad and thoughtful, a feast of food and love, a book about young and old, a book I finished feeling very satisfied.
And I haven't even mentioned her beautiful descriptions of the glorious Tuscan countryside. Makes me want to jump on the next plane. My guess is  that this will not be the last novel she sets there.

This, Sarah-Kate Lynch’s seventh novel, has already been sold into the United States, Australia, Poland, the Netherlands, Portugal and Brazil.Her audience continues to build around the world and at home as readers savour her delightful concoctions of modern love, quirky life, and mouth-watering morsels.

The germ of the idea for Dolci di Love grew from a conversation about a real-life husband who turned out to have a secret family. Most men struggle with just one, so how, Sarah-Kate wondered, did anyone manage a second, hidden one? Then she met a woman who was part of such a secret, and some of her questions were answered.

To further research Dolci di Love, Sarah-Kate made two separate trips to the hilltop towns of Tuscany, where she attempted to learn Italian and found possibly the world’s most tantalizing pasticceria.

It was on one of these trips that Sarah-Kate discovered little old ladies clad in black who sat in separated doorways watching the world go by. She began to wonder: what if all these little old ladies were not so separate? What if they were in cahoots and up to something? Thus the Secret League of Widowed Darners was born …

Great fun. Good for the soul.