TLC Book Tours Book Review: The Supreme Macaroni Company

About The Supreme Macaroni Company

• Hardcover: 352 pages

• Publisher: Harper (November 26, 2013)

For over a hundred years, the Angelini Shoe Company in Greenwich Village has relied on the leather produced by Vechiarelli & Son in Tuscany. This historic business partnership provides the twist of fate for Valentine Roncalli, the school teacher turned shoemaker, to fall in love with Gianluca Vechiarelli, a tanner with a complex past . . . and a secret.

A piece of surprising news is revealed at The Feast of the Seven Fishes when Valentine and Gianluca join her extended family on a fateful Christmas Eve. Now faced with life altering choices, Valentine remembers the wise words that inspired her in the early days of her beloved Angelini Shoe Company: “A person who can build a pair of shoes can do just about anything.” The proud, passionate Valentine is going to fight for everything she wants and savor all she deserves—the bitter and the sweetness of life itself.

The Supreme Macaroni Company is Trigiani at her comedic and dramatic best, the inside story of a family business, and the shoemaker who carries on the tradition while juggling a new marriage and family. The pull between old world Italian ways and American ambition tear at Valentine, as a secret is revealed that changes the course of her life. The story takes the reader from the cobblestone streets of Greenwich Village, to lush New Orleans, and home to Italy, in Tuscany and on the Amalfi coast, with a surprise twist that takes the action to America’s rust belt, Youngstown, Ohio.

Review: Adriana Trigiani is one of those authors that you can't help but love. She weaves stories of complex families and love and life.

I read The Shoemaker's Wife last year and it blew me away.

The Supreme Macaroni Company is no less awesome. This is the final book in the Valentine trilogy and it is a fine conclusion to this series. I think it could be read as a stand alone novel, but reading the prior two books will help you along so that you understand the wild and wonderful family dynamics.

I love Valentine and love Gianluca....The relationship you see here is so real and full of drama, even though their world isn't one that most could relate to. They don't have high society drama, but rather family drama. The kind of drama you get when two cultures marry.

And though I don't wish to spoil things...you will be crying towards the end. No, you will be bawling your eyes out.

This is supposed to be the last book in the trilogy, but I hope Adriana continues Valentine's story, because it didn't really feel finished to me.

Rating: 5 flowers

TLC Book Review: The Shoemaker's Wife

Author: Adriana Trigiani
Title: The Shoemaker's Wife
Publisher: Harper
Publish Date: April 3, 2012
Buy: Amazon

Review Copy Provided By: TLC Book Tours and the publisher

Book Blurb: he fateful first meeting of Enza and Ciro takes place amid the haunting majesty of the Italian Alps at the turn of the last century. Still teenagers, they are separated when Ciro is banished from his village and sent to hide in New York's Little Italy, apprenticed to a shoemaker, leaving a bereft Enza behind. But when her own family faces disaster, she, too, is forced to emigrate to America. Though destiny will reunite the star-crossed lovers, it will, just as abruptly, separate them once again—sending Ciro off to serve in World War I, while Enza is drawn into the glamorous world of the opera . . . and into the life of the international singing sensation Enrico Caruso. Still, Enza and Ciro have been touched by fate—and, ultimately, the power of their love will change their lives forever. A riveting historical epic of love and family, war and loss, risk and destiny, inspired by the author's own family history, The Shoemaker's Wife is the novel Adriana Trigiani was born to write.

Review: I've had Adriana's books on my TBR pile for ages. This is the first book I've gotten around to reading and boy am I glad I did.

There is absolutely nothing not to love about The Shoemaker's Wife. You start with the cover that is so hard to pull your eyes from and then you sink into the story itself.

You fall in love with the characters. I loved that Ciro took center stage over Enza for the greater part of the book. He was a character with faults, but he was so genuine that you loved him for them. He wasn't perfect but he was believable. Enza was almost too good to be true, but you wanted good things for her.

It seemed like forever before these two finally found each other at the right time. Fate really found ways of keeping them apart throughout the whole novel.

Adriana paints a vivid picture of NYC in the 1900s, when the US was welcoming immigrants from all over. The story of Ciro and Enza is not a happy one in many ways. Like many of the families that came to the US then, it was life that conspired to send them from their homeland. Adriana shows us their struggles as well as their triumphs. Both characters build lives in NYC and then in Minnesota.

There's only been one other book that brought me to tears this year and that was Sarah McCoy's The Baker's Daughter.

Everyone should read at least one of Adriana's books. I highly recommend this one and I'm soon going to go through all the others sitting on my shelves, because I think I'm addicted to her writing. This book is definitely a must read! If I could give it more than 5 flowers I would.

Rating:  5 flowers

About Adriana Trigiani: Adriana Trigiani is an award-winning playwright, television writer, and documentary filmmaker. The author of the Big Stone Gap series; Very Valentine; Brava, Valentine; Lucia, Lucia; The Queen of the Big Time; and Rococo, she has also written the bestselling memoir Don’t Sing at the Table as well as the young adult novels Viola in Reel Life and Viola in the Spotlight. Her books have been published in thirty-six countries, and she has written and will direct the big-screen version of her first novel, Big Stone Gap. She lives in New York City with her husband and daughter. Visit Adriana at her website: www.adrianatrigiani.com, like her on Facebook, and follow her on Twitter.