What Loveandpizza.it is Really About

(Day 2 of 30 – story crumbs from the world of Loveandpizza.it 🍕)

Right… yesterday I told you that Loveandpizza.it is coming back. Today, the obvious question: what’s it actually about?

(Without spoiling a single thing, obviously. Cross my heart, remember?)

Here’s the short version. A Brazilian woman called Carolina moves to Napoli for a job. Just for a year, she tells herself; a neat little full stop on a chapter that hasn’t gone remotely to plan. Because Carolina has recently had her heart rather thoroughly broken, and she has decided, with enormous conviction, that she is done with love. Finished. No, thank you. Pass the chocolate. (You will get to know that, for Carolina, chocolate is ‘unpassable’, so you can draw your own conclusions on the level of her heartbreak here)

You can probably guess how well that goes. 😏

Because Napoli has other ideas. So does a job that comes with far more complications than “teach English, see Italy, go home” – starting with the people it puts in her path. So do a couple of extremely inconvenient men. This is a city that refuses, point blank, to let anyone stay closed-off and sensible for long – and Carolina doesn’t stand a chance.

So yes, it’s a love story. There’s pizza (so much pizza). There’s sunshine and chaos and the kind of laughter that ambushes you mid-sentence. But underneath all of that, Loveandpizza.it is really about the bigger, quieter things: belonging somewhere new. Starting over when you hadn’t planned to. The particular terror – and the thrill – of letting yourself want something again, after you’d promised yourself you absolutely wouldn’t.

Or, as it says on the gorgeous new cover: because love, like pizza, comes with too many tempting options…

That’s the truest line of the lot, if you ask me. We like to think we’ve got our lives neatly ordered: the menu chosen, the decision made, the heart firmly closed for business. And then life slides something in front of us that we did not order, and there we are, completely undone, wondering how on earth we got here.

That’s Carolina. And, if we’re honest, that’s most of us at one time or another. (Right? 🫣)

Tomorrow, Napoli gets a day all to itself, because a city this loud deserves top billing. Napoli was never just a backdrop, not in this book and not in my life. Napoli is practically a character in its own right (and a shameless stealer of hearts!) – from the first page to the last.

So tell me in the comments: have you ever gone somewhere “just for a while,” and found it changed you completely? I’d love to hear – and I read and reply to every single one. 🤗

Dani. x

P.S. Loveandpizza.it is coming back in English, Italian and Portuguese. Save your slice and you’ll be first to know the moment your edition’s ready. 🍕