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by April Lindner
Release date: January 27th, 2015
Published by: Poppy (Little, Brown)
Genre: Young Adult Contemporary
Format: Hardcover, eBook
Format read: ARC from the publisher.
SUMMARY
While backpacking through Florence, Italy, during the summer
before she heads off to college, Lucy Sommersworth finds herself falling in
love with the culture, the architecture, the food... and Jesse Palladino, a
handsome street musician.
After a whirlwind romance, Lucy returns home,
determined to move on from her "vacation flirtation." But just
because summer is over doesn't mean Lucy and Jesse are over, too.
In this coming-of-age romance, April Lindner perfectly
captures the highs and lows of a summer love that might just be meant to last
beyond the season.
GUEST POST from April Lindner
Some Rules of the Road
Like Lucy Sommersworth, the heroine of Love, Lucy, my parents gave me the gift of a lifetime: a
backpacking trip to Europe. I was a bit older than Lucy — 22, and just out of
college — but when I arrived in Milan, Italy with a Eurail pass, a copy of Let’s Go: Europe, and a seventy-pound
backpack I could barely lift, I was a wee bit terrified. Like Lucy, I spoke
only a little bit of Italian, just barely enough to get by, and I wasn’t particularly
good at reading maps or train schedules. Unlike Lucy, I was travelling solo.
Luckily, my journey began with training wheels. I’d just
taken a college Italian class, and my professor had offered a safe crash pad
for the first few days of my trip — in her family home in the Alps. Less luckily,
when I reached Malpensa airport, nobody was there to pick me up. Giddy with
excitement and jet lag, I wandered around the airport, eavesdropping on
Italians as they hugged each other hello and goodbye, and had noisy arguments. I’d
never felt more alone in my life. Where would I sleep that night if my ride
didn’t show up?
Luckily, my professor’s brother arrived at last to whisk me
away to the family home in Domodossola. The extended family welcomed and fed me,
gave me tours of their city with its charming medieval center, helped me
practice my Italian, and, when the time was right, brought me to the train
station where my solo travels began for real. It was time to take off the
training wheels.
If I’d felt alone back in the airport, I was even more so on
that train to Verona, a city where I didn’t know a soul. In those pre-internet
days, I could disappear into thin air and nobody would even notice I was gone. The
thought was chilling, but oddly exciting.
By nightfall, I’d made it to Verona. I’d figured out the
public transportation, found a youth hostel, and booked myself a bed. Best of
all, I had introduced myself to a handful of other backpackers. We hung out
together in the hostel’s common area, sharing bread and cheese, exchanging
stories, discussing the rules of the road — those bits of practical wisdom our
travels were teaching us. Here are a few.
Time passes
differently on the road. Spend a few
very intense hours seeing the sites with strangers and by the end of the day,
those strangers have become a part of your story. Years later you’ll see their
faces in your photo album and still remember stray details of the adventures
you shared together, even if you can’t quite recall their names.
Spontaneity is key. There are few things as magical as showing up
at a train station with no idea where you’re headed next, picking a random
train, and hopping on.
Janis Joplin said it
best: Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose. When you’re carrying all your possessions on
your back in a city where you don’t know a soul, you’re absolutely free. You
can go anywhere, do anything. That freedom has its lonely moments — but it can be
the doorway to all kinds of adventures.
Embrace misadventure.
As carefully as you plan there will
be crazy mistakes: wrong turns, slept-through train stops, multilingual
misunderstandings, and all kinds of other blunders — and these will make the best
stories. My misadventures are some of my favorite memories. The time I missed
curfew and had to climb into my hostel through a second-story window. The
morning when, hanging out my recently washed clothes to dry, I dropped my wet
underthings out the window, onto a stranger’s head. The night when, with no
room to stay in, I slept on Venice’s train station steps with about a hundred
other backpackers, the stars above us and the Grand Canal stretched out before
us.
Would I trade that last memory for a safe, comfy night in an
actual bed? Not on your life.
GIVEAWAY
- 1 copy of LOVE, LUCY to be ordered from Amazon or The Book
Depository (Int’l)
- 3 JANE posters (signed) – US only
- Ends February 6 at 11:59 p.m. Pacific
(Bumbles and Fairy-Tales will not be held responsible for any lost, damaged, unclaimed, etc. prizes.)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR - April Lindner
April Lindner is the author of three novels:
Catherine, a modernization of Wuthering Heights; Jane, an update of Jane Eyre; and Love,
Lucy, releasing January 27, 2015.
She also has published two poetry
collections, Skin and This Bed Our Bodies Shaped.
She plays
acoustic guitar badly, sees more rock concerts than she’d care to admit, travels whenever she can, cooks
Italian food, and lavishes attention on her pets — two Labrador retriever mixes and two
excitable guinea pigs.
A professor of English at Saint Joseph’s University, April lives in Pennsylvania with
her husband and two sons.
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