That’s Amore is an Italian road romance that gets off to a rocky start, but eventually settles into a pleasantly light and frothy read.

Neither the hero nor heroine makes a good first impression. Anne Marie Jackson seems to be too much the typical wimpy librarian who is so common in romances. A California divorcee, she arrives in Italy to visit a man she knew more than twenty years earlier when he was an exchange student at her high school. Her ex-husband, a dentist who left her for his dental hygenist (how’s that for a cliche?), is about to remarry, and she’s looking forward to finally taking the trip to Italy she always dreamed of, as well as seeing Giovanni again. I’ll leave it up to each individual reader to decide whether it’s romantic or just plain sad that a 40-something woman is still dreaming about a guy she knew for a short time in high school. (My vote: sad.) The slow opening chapter describes Anne Marie’s somewhat rough arrival in Italy, which finds her ready to plop herself down and burst into tears within the first few pages. She comes across as hopelessly inexperienced, certainly not a woman who should be traveling in a foreign country by herself at all. If this weren’t a romance novel with a guaranteed happy ending, I would be sure terrible things were going to happen to her while she ambles haplessly along.

The hero, Marco Moretti, isn’t much better. When she makes it to her hotel, he introduces himself to Anne Marie as a tour guide and forces himself into her life. In actuality he is an Italian detective who suspects her of smuggling a precious diamond into the country. It seems Anne Marie’s Giovanni is actually a jewel smuggler Marco has been pursuing for some time, ever since he seduced and abandoned Marco’s sister. Heroes who suspect heroines of being criminals aren’t uncommon, but Marco’s arrogance when he looks at naïve, buttoned-down Anne Marie and thinks to himself that he knows a criminal when he sees one only told me that he’s neither very good at his job nor very bright. His suspicions also last far too long – for most of the story actually. This is one of those books where the hero is willing to sleep with the heroine even when he thinks she’s a criminal, which seems both dishonorable and unprofessional to say the least.

Even though I had little affection for these characters, the story slowly grew on me. It has a great deal of low key charm, as Anne Marie and Marco make their way across Italy in pursuit of the mysteriously elusive Giovanni. The suspense element is very slight, mainly a device upon which to hang a series of misadventures. It’s pretty goofy, as the author practically underlines the truth about the diamond for the reader while keeping her characters clueless. It’s so obvious what’s going on I would usually be more annoyed, except the story really isn’t about the smuggling. It’s really just two people making their way through picturesque settings with just enough plot to move things along.

Anne Marie and Marco are constantly in motion, often with Anne Marie trying to lose him and Marco in pursuit. Anne Marie may not be the most worldly heroine, but in a genre where naïve usually equals stupid, she really isn’t. She’s actually quite sweet and once I got used to her, I found her kind of refreshing, though I might have found her easier to believe had she been younger. Marco is less likable – his combination of suspicion and lust not exactly endearing – but other characters compensate. Some, like Marco’s grandmother, who wants to see him marry and produce grandchildren, would generally be too stereotypical, but they are imbued with too much warmth to be dismissed so easily.

That may be the key to why That’s Amore manages to end up in the plus column, despite its thin storyline and characters. It’s insubstantial, yes, and definitely fluffy, but the story is told with warmth and affection for the characters and setting. Grace offers just enough atmosphere and local flavor to appeal to the armchair traveler in all of us, and since contemporary romances set in Italy aren’t exactly common, that may be enough to make this one worth a look.