Review: Inferno

Reviewed by Shelly
 

When I started reading this story, I was a little taken back because there was a lot of restaurant ‘speak’ that I’m not familiar with. But then I read the author’s intro and things made a little more sense.

After five years in Europe Dante Caletti’s returns home to find that his family’s restaurant has gone downhill. He’s come back because his mother, Gabrielle, who had not previously asked for help, has finally reached out. Not only does he have to save his family’s name, reputation, and restaurant, he has to do it in a very short time frame - eight weeks. For the kind of renovations to get the job done, it’s going to take some hard decisions, long days, and a lot of luck.

Dante’s got a lot of luck because none of the contractors were either late or unavailable. I enjoyed the premise of this story and maybe because it’s a very short one, there’s some suspension of disbelief that I had to liberally invoke to get around some things --including, but not limited to, why Gabrielle would let the restaurant get to its current state and why Dante, knowing that his mother was not the business type, would leave his mother in charge. But I digress.

For the past five years, Elise Fraser has worked two jobs saving and scrimping to start her own business, a flower shop. After being in business for a couple weeks, Dante walks into her shop and offers her something that will allow her business to thrive and succeed.

Like I said, I really liked the premise of this story. The secondary characters were interesting – Tommy the chef (he’s former military so that alone was fascinating to me), Dante’s mom, Gabrielle, and restaurant staffer Ronaldo. I would have liked to see Dante and Elise develop their relationship a little bit more, the ‘I love you’ was way too quick for me – they hadn’t even gone on a date by then. Also, there was too much repetition in the storyline, maybe a bit of editing would help with that.

There was no sex which I was glad of. That would have been quite disappointing to see especially with the time frame of the story.

Happy Reading Folks!

Rating: C-

*Book provided by author for review 

Click to purchase: Amazon

Inferno

by Kate Austin

Release Date: December 11, 2012

Publisher: Corvallis Press