Rome in Love

I’m always drawn to books set in Europe, and when I saw Rome in Love by Anita Hughes, it instantly piqued my interest. It follows an actress named Amelia, who is in Rome to film a remake of Roman Holiday… and she’s playing Audrey Hebburn’s part! I haven’t seen Roman Holiday, but I loved Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady, so I found this setup intriguing. 

One thing the author does well here is immerse the readers in the Italian setting. I loved seeing descriptions of different landmarks in Rome, some of which I was fortunate to see a couple of years ago myself! It’s vividly drawn, from various monuments to the delectable foods local to Italy. 

I also enjoyed the aspect of Amelia’s acting work, as well as the old Audrey Hepburn letters she finds. There’s a bit of romance, too, which I enjoyed… even if I wasn’t so sure about the guy at first.

However, one thing that became increasingly distracting throughout the novel was the constant mention of what every character was wearing in any given scene. I normally don’t mind having a visual of what characters look like, but this was absolutely excessive. The mentions were too frequent and too detailed, and in the case of one character who’s always wearing a yellow shirt, rather redundant. Somehow the clothing descriptions ended up overshadowing everything else in this book. It really detracted from the overall story. 

While I liked a lot about Rome in Love, it was an uneven book that I’ll probably mostly remember for its unrestrained emphasis on irrelevant clothing descriptions.