Chique Secrets of Dolce Amore by Barbara Conelli
Published by: Flagrans Press
Publication Date: April 30, 2012
ISBN-10: 0982600437
ISBN-13: 978-0982600436
Pages: 158
Review Copy from: WOW
Edition: Kindle
My Rating: 3

Synopsis:
When we talk about “the city of love”, most of us immediately think of Paris, Venice, Rome or another famous metropolis whose romantic stories we know from movies and novels. But to Barbara Conelli, none of them are the real city of love. To the author, love doesn’t mean passionate gestures, big promises of eternal devotion, ardent embraces, torrid kisses, or stormy arguments followed by even stormier reconciliations.

To the author, love means something completely different and much simpler.
The smell of morning cappuccino and fresh pannetone at Pasticceria Marchesi. A
brisk stroll through the awakening city and sensual curves of gold shadows on the wet paving of Via della Spiga. Joyful shouts of bohemian artists and their graceful muses at Fornace Curti. A crispy panzerotto savored in the company of cantankerous pigeons on the piazzetta of San Fedele. Old furniture stores in narrow streets and adorable trinkets she can never resist. The tinkling of a tram from 1929 with uncomfortable wooden seats and a hundred-year-old conductor. Sublime flamingos and peevish peacocks in an emerald-green garden that has never been owned by anyone. Remote nooks and crannies whose secrets have been revealed only to her and the few ghosts with aristocratic hearts who appear in them from time to time. Visionary dreams, inextinguishable hopes, the desire to live, the courage to create, the strength to grow.

To the author, love means all this and much more. This and much more is
what she receives from the city that makes you fall in love a hundred times a day,
breaking your heart over and over again, only to make it beat faster five minutes
later. Milan. Barbara’s city of love. The city she has adored since the year dot
because it’s just like her: it has dozens of faces, it laughs and cries at the same time, it’s vain, unpredictable, and you never know what mood it wakes up with.

Join Barbara Conelli and submerge yourself in the secrets of this magical city
that has been breathing love for centuries. Love that is dignified, childish, creative, treacherous, passionate, painful, forgiving, crazy, insane, unbridled, endless, fleeting, unfaithful, platonic, carnal, hateful, desperate, volatile, conceited, and divine. The kind of love whose chalice you quickly drain, so that on the next corner, you can reach for another one, even more delicious and intoxicating.

My Thoughts and Opinion:
I just returned from Milan, Italy but without the usual traveling inconveniences of packing, unpacking, airport security and the anxiety due to a very long flight, which I admit, I’m not fond of.

Barbara Conelli takes the reader on vacation with her graphic and dynamic descriptions of Milan in a detailed picturesque narration. A quick read but full of a resplendent portrayal of the people and sites of Milan. It is quite evident of the author’s love for this city of amore. She takes the reader through the streets and presents the landscapes such as museums, the fashion district including Tiffany’s, restaurants which include a couple of recipes, the trams one mode of transportation, cafes, fine arts such as paintings, sculptures, and even ballet studios. And introduces the people behind these institutions. This would be a very handy travel guide, if you had plans on visiting, as she shares the non tourist sites. Or if you want to escape in your mind and the comfort of your home. If you haven’t traveled to Milan, you will want to after reading this book.

DISCLAIMER
I received a copy of this book, at no charge to me,
in exchange for my honest review.
No items that I receive
are ever sold…they are kept by me,
or given to family and/or friends.

(2012 Challenges: Eook, FreeReads, Where Are You, 52 in 52, Outdo Yourself, 100+)

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This week’s question:
A while ago, I interviewed my readers for a change, and my final question was, “What question have I NOT asked at BTT that you’d love me to ask?” I got some great responses and will be picking out some of the questions from time to time to ask the rest of you. Like now.
SammyDee asks:
What book(s) have you read that you’re secretly ashamed to admit

My response:
The books that came instantly to mind aren’t necessarily that I’m ashamed to admit to, but more so embarrassed.  And there are 4 read, 1 waiting to be read.

I have openly admitted that I am computer challenged, which that is something that I’m ashamed of, just ask Gina from Hott Books.  I don’t know what I would do without her as she is my computer angel.  She puts up with me, and with much patience I might add, for all the questions I ask how to do certain things.  She was partially the force behind  the new look and the reason why and how I moved over to wordpress., which she did both.  Because I am always bothering her, I bought WordPress For Dummies as a reference guide and even then, I have trouble and end up going to her for help.  The other is a book she just sent me , Getting Geeky With Twitter, since I am still trying to navigate that site but haven’t had the time to open it up and read.

The other books that came to mind are 3 that I read and reviewed from a request last year.  As I said, I’m not ashamed but a bit embarrassed because of the reasons I accepted the review request.  They were children’s books.  I don’t read children’s books since it has been many years that I have had to read to my sons, seeing that they are 26 and 28, and my hinting for grandchildren has fallen on deaf ears.  So there aren’t any little ones around to share these books with.  However, if I read and reviewed them, I would also have the opportunity to host a giveaway, and seeing it was right around Christmas, I thought it would be a fun giveaway for those that follow my blog and did have little tykes in their lives.  And the final one was The Bedtime Book For Dogs, an adorable book for children that instead of being read to, they could read to their dogs.  That book I gave to my son and future dil, partially as a joke, because she would say all the time, even with my husband and I, that it was time for “bonding and quality time”.  And would say the same thing about their dog.  So I thought this would be the perfect book so that she could have her “bonding and quality time” with the dog.  Knowing the personality of this dog, the book has probably been digested, literally lol.

OK, your turn.  What books are you ashamed to say that you read?

Hi everyone!!  Do I have a treat for you!!  Nicole from Tribute Books is taking time out of her busy schedule to stop by and introduce us to today’s guest author.  And if I know my followers, I am sure a lot of you will be very interested in her book.  So please help me welcome Nicole and Kathy Leonard Czepiel.

Kathy Leonard Czepiel

Kathy Leonard Czepiel is the recipient of a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and teaches writing at Quinnipiac University. Her short fiction has been published in numerous journals including Cimarron Review, Indiana Review, Calyx, Confrontation, and The Pinch. A native of New York State’s mid-Hudson Valley, she now lives in Connecticut with her husband and two children.
You can visit Kathy at her website, Facebook, Twitter, GoodReads, and Tribute Books Blog Tours.

GUEST POST

            Like many twentysomethings today, I moved back to my home town shortly after college graduation. I had spent my whole life in this little Hudson River Valley town, a farming community with two traffic lights and three schools. But when I began working as a reporter for the local weekly newspaper, I met people and learned things I had never known before. One was that the area had once been known as The Violet Capital of the World.  How could I have spent my entire childhood there and never heard this? Though I didn’t know it then, my first novel had been born with that question. However, it was fifteen years before I was ready to write it. Writing a novel is a big commitment, and I knew its subject would have to hold my interest for a long time. The violets were the perfect starting place.

I began my research for A Violet Season at a local history museum with a file of newspaper clippings and photocopied pages from old books, but eventually I had to leave the library and get out in the “field”—in my case, a greenhouse. It’s one thing to read about something; it’s quite another to experience it firsthand. Leaving the library marked a turning point in my research—the point at which I had to proclaim myself a writer and ask someone else to take my research seriously. That someone was a local farmer named Fred Battenfeld, who graciously showed me around his greenhouses one cold March day. Earlier generations of Battenfelds had been violet growers, and though the family switched to growing hybrid anemones and Christmas trees decades ago, Fred still grows one small bed of violets, the only one in the Northeast as far as I know. He showed me around his greenhouses, even down into the “stokehouse” or furnace room. He demonstrated how to pick and bunch the flowers. He answered all of my questions.

Most of my writing days are pretty dull. I sit at my desk, next to my study window which looks out on my neighbors’ houses, and I plug away at my desktop computer. Sometimes I get up to make a cup of coffee or switch the laundry from the washer to the dryer. But research days are something else entirely—exciting not only because I’m away from my desk but because I never know what new information I’ll discover. On a trip to the New York Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, I got the feel for the tenement apartment in my own novel and borrowed a few particular details, including the “short clothesline of socks hung over the stove.” Sometimes the “research” is closer to home—a neighborhood walk, for example, on which I was struck by a squirrel with “afternoon sunlight casting a halo at the edges of its tail.” I love getting lost in the written world at my desk, but perhaps my favorite writing days aren’t about writing at all. They’re about the real-world discovery of these little details that bring my story to life.

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ABOUT THE BOOK
A mother’s choices in a time of crisis threaten the one person she means to protect—her only daughter—and force her to make the boldest move of her life.

The violet industry is booming in 1898, and a Hudson Valley farm owned by the Fletcher family is turning a generous profit for its two oldest brothers. But Ida Fletcher, married to the black sheep youngest brother, has taken up wet nursing to help pay the bills, and her daughter, Alice, has left school to work. As they risk losing their share of the farm, the two women make increasingly great sacrifices for their family’s survival, sacrifices that will set them against one another in a lifelong struggle for honesty and forgiveness. Vivid and compelling, A Violet Season is the story of an unforgettable mother-daughter journey in a time when women were just waking to their own power and independence.
Book Details:
Price: $15.00 paperback, $9.99 ebook
Pages: 272
ISBN: 9781451655063
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Release: July 10, 2012
Purchase links: Amazon, B&N, Simon & Schuster, iBookstore.

THANKS TO THE KINDNESS OF AUTHOR, KATHY LEONARD CZEPIEL,
I HAVE ONE (1) PB COPY TO GIVE AWAY. U.S. RESIDENTS ONLY.

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This month Simon & Schuster are offering
Romance EBooks at a discounted prices!!!!

Don’t Miss Out!!

Until July 15th you can purchase this ebook for only $2.99.

ABOUT THE BOOK

New York Times bestselling author Jane Feather again delights with her new book in this entrancing Georgian trilogy featuring three noble brothers who are offered a preposterous opportunity to restore their family’s mortgaged lands. An eccentric uncle promises a lavish inheritance, but only if each marries—thus redeeming—a fallen woman. And if even one brother fails to fulfill the old man’s decree, none will gain the windfall.

Lady Serena Grantley was born to the nobility, but fortune’s whim placed her in control of her gamester stepfather, who uses her beauty to lure young men to his gambling tables. Serena even dismissed her first love, the Honorable Sebastian Sullivan, at her stepfather’s command. But when he attempts to force her into a liaison with a dissolute earl, Serena resolves to do his bidding no more. Sebastian is the only man who ever captured her heart, and it is to him she turns. . . .

Torn between family loyalty and the woman he loves, Sebastian faces a devilish dilemma. His uncle is ailing, and time is running short. Desperate to find a solution, Sebastian conceives a dangerous plan—a wager that could bring him and Serena happiness at last . . . or separate them forever.
PURCHASE LINKS:     AMAZON           B&N           INDIEBOUND

THANKS TO AYELET, FROM SIMON & SCHUSTER, I HAVE ONE (1)
COPY OF JoANN ROSS’ LATEST NOVEL, AN UNSUITABLE BRIDE, TO
GIVE AWAY, WHICH GOES ON SALE JULY 24th. U.S. RESIDENTS ONLY

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DISCLAIMER
This post was at the request of Simon & Schuster.
No items that I receive
are ever sold…they are kept by me,
or given to family and/or friends.
ADDENDUM
I do not have any affiliation with Amazon.com or
Barnes & Noble. I am an IndieBound affliate.
I am providing link(s) solely for visitors
that may be interested in purchasing this Book/EBook.

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HOW FAR WOULD YOU GO TO RECLAIM WHAT IS YOUR’S?*

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ONE WINNING BOOK PER HOUSEHOLD
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Jake looked away from the window and his eyes fell on the tray of his fax machine.  Another random junk fax.  Someone had his number.  He took one step on the plush beige carpet, reached down, and picked up the piece of paper that would forever change his life.  Pandora’s Box on an eight-by-eleven inch sheet of paper.

Kindle 22%

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