Review by Booklist Review
Passions run high in the Palladino household. Seventy-year-old Varina's millennial children, sons Dante and Davide and daughter Donatello, can go from zero to 60 squabbling over memories of idiotic pranks played as toddlers but will just as easily rally with mutual support when true trouble strikes. Varina's 92-year-old mother, Sylvia, is an equal handful, frail one minute, feisty the next. Add the unending responsibility of running the popular Italian deli she started with her late husband, and Varina finds she is in serious need of a vacation. A chance encounter with a woman at the travel agency rewards Varina with both the traveling companion and best friend she has long been looking for. But with a large, messy family like Varina's, something is bound to conspire to keep her from her trip, things like an internet-dating scheme cooked up by Sylvia and Donatello to activate Varina's non-existent love life or Donatello's increasingly complicated one. No region of the country has a lock on Italian culture, but DeFino's zesty homage to the northern New Jersey microcosm delights with its universality and specificity. What was it Tolstoy said about families? Make that famiglias, and the Palladino clan more than qualifies.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
DeFino (The Bar Harbor Retirement Home for Famous Writers (And Their Muses)) offers a bighearted story of a suburban New Jersey Italian family. Holding the family together, if barely, is 70-year-old Varina Palladino, widowed 14 years and running the family's grocery store. Varina's feisty 92-year-old mother, Sylvia, and her volatile 35-year-old daughter, Donatella, believe Varina needs a new guy in her life, and they concoct a plan to arrange a match. Meanwhile, Varina has plans to travel in Europe, Sylvia finds a possible love interest of her own, Donatella gets in trouble for violating a restraining order against her ex, and a gay family friend yearns for Donatella's older brother. DeFino prefaces each chapter with colorful definitions of Italian American slang and hand gestures ("To counter the maloik , make the ma'cornoot (mana cornuto, in Italian) or, the 'devil' sign, by making a fist and leaving up index finger and pinky"). DeFino keeps the many plots spinning over the course of a year, with happy romances tempered by bittersweet changes in the characters' lives and a mental health diagnosis for Donatella. Readers will be glad to immerse themselves in the Palladinos' exuberant world. Agent: Janna Bonikowski, Knight Agency. (Feb.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
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 that offers a lesson in New Jersey--inflected Italian. 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 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 is love that permeates and elevates this terrific Italian family saga. Adriana Trigiani fans will feel right at home here; a slightly more food-centric read-alike is Angelina's Bachelors by Brian O'Reilly.--Stacy Alesi
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