First published 2018
Ginia is sixteen and craves excitement in the summer heat of 1930s Italy. When she befriends Amelia, a sophisticated artist's model, everything changes. Amelia draws Ginia into a world of bohemian artists where freedom intoxicates and boundaries blur. In this new circle, Ginia meets Guido, a mysterious young painter who captures her heart. She throws herself into loving him with the intensity only first love can bring. But Guido remains distant and enigmatic, leaving Ginia grasping for something that may never be hers. As the season progresses, Ginia discovers that the adult world she longed to enter carries painful truths about desire and disappointment. Her romantic awakening becomes a reckoning with the gap between dreams and reality, between the person she was and who she must become.
Genres: fiction, 20th-century, coming-of-age, contemporary
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: coming-of-age, first-love, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Italy
Period: 1930s
112 pages · ebook · Penguin Books Ltd