Not Quite the Intro I Hoped For
Author Traci Andrighetti has long been on my radar. In fact, I’ve had the first in her Franki Amato series for a few years now. When I saw she was introducing a spin off series and she was offering an introductory novella for free to her newsletter subscribers, I jumped on it. After all, it was a good chance to meet these characters and hopefully jump on in at the beginning of a new series. However, Pompeii, Paccheri, and Panic wasn’t quite as enjoyable as I hoped it would be.
This story introduced me to Giada Adair, who is going through a painful divorce and has taken a job as a tour guide in Italy in an attempt to rebuild her life. She and her best friend have headed over before her first official tour to do a little research in Pompeii. But her trip takes an unexpected turn when an ancient lamp just unearth from Pompeii disappears and Giada finds herself implicated. Worse yet, a young woman dies in front of Giada, and she becomes a suspect. That is, unless she was the intended victim. Giada is going to have to channel her cousin Franki if she wants to get out of this alive.
While yes, this novella is the first book to star Giada, she and her friend Moira have apparently appeared in at least one of the books about Franki. And Franki did have a cameo here as well. However, that wasn’t an issue for me. We were given enough background to follow these two characters and everyone else was new. And I did like our leads and felt the supporting characters were sufficiently mysterious.
And my issues with the story have nothing to do with the plot. For a 100-page novella, the story was quite good. We got a couple of fun twists before reaching a logical conclusion and a page turning climax.
One of my issues was with the language. No, I’m not talking about four letter words. I’m talking about the fact that the book takes place in Italy. Yes, there is a glossary in the back, but I’m lazy. I don’t want to keep flipping back to understand what I just read. This is a me issue, but it was something in the back of my mind, especially since it ruined another series I tried to read set in Italy for me. Additionally, one of the characters spoke in an accent that was just annoying.
The other issue I had was the humor. A lot of it was coming from potty humor, quite literally. (Okay, ancient potty humor, but still.) At times I was cringing. Others, I was laughing. And they would often happen just a line or two apart, so clearly, again, this is more of a me thing than anything else.
This is designed to be a culinary and travel themed cozy series, and it got off to a great start there. My mouth watered at some of what they ate, and we get a delicious sounding recipe at the end.
I don’t want to dismiss Traci Andrighetti after one novella. But I’m not quite as anxious to start this series. I think I’ll try the first book in her other series I already have before I decide if I want to continue with her books or not.
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