My Review: Book 1 – I enjoyed the story, it was well written and easy to follow. Ronnie 74, a widower wants to desperately keep her privacy and free living, so when her daughter Nadia announces she is planning to come visit and stay next door, she and her friend come up with an idea to have someone stay there. This is where Beth comes into the story, recently left by her husband, she jumps at the opportunity to do something with her life, since her daughter Beth is at Uni and life is for the living. It’s a fun packed book with laughter, love and real friendship, encouragement. A wonderful summer read.

Book 2 – A good follow on that dips between the past and present day. Family complexities, secrets and facing up to life as it is. Here we see the long term fall out of an affair. Ronnie touches deep within her emotions and memories. Her long time and best friend Marina by her side and their new female applicant Annie who comes to stay in the villa with a bus load of baggage of her own. Nadia also makes an appearance of her own which ads to the stories depth. An interesting read.

The Rome Apartment (The Italian Escape Series Book 1) – https://geni.us/B0C37RTMS2social
As I stood on the terrace and gazed out over the most glorious view, he studied my face and said to me ‘Why do you look sad? No-one should be sad in Rome. We only have this one life, you know. Don’t waste it.’

Beth stands in the sunshine outside the magnificent wrought-iron gates of Villa Alba holding her suitcase. Only a few short months ago, she dropped her beloved only daughter off at college, holding back tears at the thought of an empty nest… clinging to the thought of the new chapter that she and her husband Joel could now begin together. But that same day, Joel dropped a bombshell. He thinks their marriage is stale, and wants a break; he says that Beth is no longer the same woman he fell in love with…

Searching for an escape, Beth spots an ad in a magazine for an apartment in Rome that is available for three months rental only to ‘an English woman of a certain age’. She reads on… Veronica, the 75-year-old owner, challenges her guests to rediscover themselves, find joy, and live life to the full – and there is no better place to do these things than in Rome, the most beautiful city in the world.

Ronnie sets Beth a list of tasks, forcing her to slow down and find beauty in every corner of the city: the sun on a stained glass window, a fragrant bunch of the freshest basil, a painting in a hidden courtyard. But her final task is the most challenging of all: to go out on a date with an unsuitable man.

But handsome and adventurous musician Rico, unsuitable in almost every way, may turn out to be just the right man to bring Beth back to life. With her break from Joel coming to an end, can Beth risk embracing the new life of exciting possibilities that Rome has opened up to her, even if it means losing everything?

Get swept away to the sunny streets of the most beautiful city in the world with this heartwarming novel about love and second chances. Perfect for fans of Faith Hogan, Elin Hilderbrand and Sheila O’Flanagan.

Secrets at the Rome Apartment (The Italian Escape Series Book 2) – https://geni.us/B0C37N5YZQsocial

Everyone has something to hide. Back then, I was a young woman, without the imagination to know how it would all end, and how the terrible consequences of the choices I made would echo down the years…

75-year-old Ronnie has made it her mission to help women of a certain age rediscover themselves. The owner of a palazzo in Rome, she has left her troubled past behind and reinvented herself in the most beautiful city in the world. And now she helps other women to do the same. Renting out her spare apartment for three months at a time, Ronnie invites her guests to take on a series of challenges that will help them to embrace beauty and joy, to rediscover themselves and to live their lives to the full.

But Ronnie’s confident exterior hides heartbreak and closely-held secrets. Why did she leave England all those years ago and what was she running away from? How did a woman who helps others to fix their shattered lives become estranged from her very own daughter, Nadia, who has left Rome and moved to England to escape her?

As Ronnie welcomes her latest guest to the Rome apartment, Nadia appears unannounced on her doorstep – pregnant and alone. Ronnie is desperate for a chance to put things right and to be part of her precious grandchild’s life, but in order to fix her family, she will have to dig up secrets from her past that could risk destroying everything…

Get swept away to the sunny streets of the most beautiful city in the world with this heartwarming novel about love and second chances. Perfect for fans of Faith Hogan, Elin Hilderbrand and Sheila O’Flanagan.

Author Bio 

Kerry Fisher is an internationally bestselling author of women’s contemporary fiction, including The Woman I Was Before, The Silent Wife (USA Today bestseller) and Other People’s Marriages, as well as a non-fiction memoir, Take My Hand. She was born in Peterborough, studied French and Italian at the University of Bath and spent many years living in Spain, Italy and France. After returning to England to work as a journalist, she eventually abandoned real life stories for the secrets of fictional families. She now lives in Surrey with her husband, with an intermittent empty nest as her two young adult children come and go.