Dancing on Sunday Afternoons is the first of Harlequin’s new Everlasting Love line, which focuses on love stories that unfold over a longer timespan than the typical romance. It’s a promising beginning, even if it’s not a perfect one.

When her grandmother Giulia suffers a terrible fall during a trip to her native Italy, Cara Serafini goes there to be with her while she undergoes surgery. At Giulia’s request, she brings a cigar box full of letters from her grandmother’s first husband Paolo. Cara knew about Paolo; after all, he was her biological grandfather, who died when her father was just a baby. But she never knew the depth of Giulia’s love for the man. As they wait for her grandmother’s surgery to begin, Giulia tells Cara the story of her lost love.

The front cover bears the tagline: “When a life story is a love story.” This particular book is much more the former than the latter. While her relationship with Paolo is a key part of the story, it’s merely one part of a book which encompasses much more. Giulia begins her tale with her childhood in a small town in Italy, and we learn a great deal about her family, her relationship with her own grandmother, and the events that eventually lead to her arrival in America. It is in New York where she meets Paolo, but again, it takes a while for their romance to begin. In the meantime, Giulia and her sisters deal with life in the new country and work in a factory, while Giulia also meets another young man who catches her interest, however briefly.

Hopefully it’s already apparent that this is not what many readers will consider a romance novel, especially since we know from the very beginning that Paolo will die. If there’s one cardinal rule for a romance, it’s that the hero isn’t going to kick the bucket in the end. Although Harlequin’s guidelines for the Everlasting Love line indicate that the books are romances, this particular release is more straight fiction or a saga, focusing on Giulia’s life story. The past portions of the book end soon after Giulia’s second marriage, which is more a match of convenience than of love, as she begins to realize she might find some happiness with her new husband. This gives the book its happy ending of a sort, especially since we know from the very beginning that Giulia had a long, satisfying marriage with her second husband until his death, even if her true heart belonged to Paolo. Still, readers expecting to find a full-fledged romance novel here may be disappointed, so I wonder about the wisdom of launching a romance line with a book that isn’t one. (The line’s second book, Kristi Gold’s Fall From Grace, just reviewed by one of my AAR colleagues, features a divorced couple growing closer again intercut with flashbacks to their earlier courtship and marriage, looks to be more in line with expectations.)

In any case, it didn’t really bother me knowing that Paolo would die in the end, because at least I knew it up front and was able to alter my expectations accordingly instead of facing an unpleasant surprise in the end. For the most part, I was able to enjoy it for what it was. Cardillo writes with a distinctive style, and the book definitely doesn’t feel like a series romance. The story is told in first-person, mostly from Giulia’s perspective, with bookending scenes told by Cara in the 1983 and the present which set up and resolve the premise. Readers looking for historicals set in the late 19th and early 20th centuries may enjoy this story, as Cardillo takes the reader from Italy to New York in this time period. I liked the way Cardillo has of capturing a place, such as an early section in Cara’s narration where she tells of her own first visit to her grandmother’s hometown. Just the description of the train station, the people she meets, and her own feelings really gives a nice sense of the place in a short amount of time. The author’s prose is smooth throughout, and the story moves fairly quickly.

My only real problem with the book was the lack of development in some areas, which made the story less satisfying than it might have been. Giulia’s first-person narrative keeps a distance between the reader and the characters, all of whom come across as somewhat thin. Perhaps the author does her job too well, because Guilia’s portion of the book does far more telling than showing, telling us about the characters without really bringing them to life. Even Giulia herself, despite most of the book being told through her eyes and in her words, feels a little two-dimensional.

Certain parts of the narrative feel underdeveloped, including her relationship with Paolo himself. This is basically the entire reason she’s telling the story, so it felt underwhelming that it wasn’t delved into more. He also comes across as too noble and perfect, which is understandable as we’re seeing him the way the woman who loved him did, but that didn’t make him a compelling character to read about. When Paolo does die, it’s rather anticlimactic. It was sad, but not as heartrending as it should have been. That’s when I realized that while I was always interested in the story, I wasn’t as invested as I could have been.

I wavered on the grade, but ultimately Dancing on Sunday Afternoons was a nicely told and involving read that for the most part I enjoyed. Readers looking for a straight romance novel should be advised going in that they won’t find that here, but readers open to more of a life story about one woman and her family will find a pretty good one here.