Review: "A Rosie Life in Italy" by Rosie Meleady

A Rosie Life in Italy by Rosie Meleady
Published October 2024 via Sourcebooks
★★★

Italy was not really the plan: Spain was, when Meleady and her husband started thinking about escaping Ireland's grey weather and rising housing prices. They'd buy something more affordable and run Meleady's destination-wedding business from there. But plans change, as plans are wont to do, and instead they picked up and moved to Italy, where they bought and restored a crumbling old mansion.

...or that's what the book description would have you believe happens in the book. I love moving-abroad memoirs, but I'm particularly keen on moving-abroad-and-restoring-an-old-house memoirs (I'm a millennial; owning property is a pipe dream), so adding this to my TBR was a no-brainer. I went in eager for details of that run-down villa and stories about what it took to bring it back to life.

This turned out to be one where the description and the contents are a mismatch. In theory, the book is about moving to Italy and buying and restoring a villa. In practice, it's chapter 21 (47% of the way through the book) before the move to Italy takes place, and it's approximately 95% of the way through the book before we learn whether or not Meleady & co. will be able to buy the house they have their sights set on. When I look more closely, I see that Meleady originally self-published this and further books as a series, but the current book description doesn't make that clear, and to some extent it feels as though the series description was attached to just the first book.

All of which is to say: Meleady's adventures in both Ireland and Italy are compelling to read about. I would likely have put the book in my queue even with a more accurate description, but I would have adjusted my expectations accordingly—as a book about exploits in home ownership renting in Ireland and Italy, and the early days of COVID in rural Italy (to say nothing of unexpected and devastating events in Meleady's personal life), this is engaging; as a book about moving to Italy and buying and HGTV-ing a house, it's disappointing. The later parts of the book also feel a bit blog-y, and I ended up wishing that the COVID-related material had been condensed (although that may be because we all lived through that period and I'm not yet ready to read about it. Talk to me in a decade).

I may yet continue with the series—looks like books 2 and 3 have a bit more house?—and I think this'll still go over well for those looking for a (mostly) lighthearted adventure read, but I'd advise reading some reviews for a more accurate sense of what you're in for.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.