Although on the surface Phaedra Patrick’s novel The Little Italian Hotel might seem like the perfect book for me – someone who adores everything about Italy – I doubt I would have picked this book up on my own. It’s only because it was chosen as this month’s book club pick that I read it.

Ginny Splinter, 49, is the host of well-known radio show called Just Ask Ginny. She offers people advice on a wide variety of problems and “Throughout her fifteen years on the air, there wasn’t a problem Ginny hadn’t tried to fix….”

It’s easy for her to look at the messy lives of other people because her life is, well, perfect. She’s soon to be celebrating her 25th wedding anniversary with her husband, Adrian. Her daughter, Phoebe, is out of the house and planning her own wedding. As a surprise, Ginny has splurged and purchased a three week stay at a fancy hotel in Bologna where she and Adrian can “renew their vows…reaffirm their love and commitment to each other and…have some fun, too.”

But things don’t quite work out that way. Adrian tells her that he can’t take three weeks off and then, worse, he tells her that he needs a break from her and their marriage.

Ginny isn’t able to cancel the trip. The best she can manage is to use the credit to move to a smaller hotel and take other people. She makes a spur of the moment decision to talk about what’s happened on the air and that’s how she ends up at Hotel Splendido with Heather, 43, a school teacher; Eric, 28, a carpenter; 80-year-old Edna; and Curtis, 38, a property developer. What do these five people have in common? Heartache.

Nico and his 18-year-old daughter, Loretta, run Hotel Splendido and the arrival of five guests for three weeks is a minor miracle. “His little Italian hotel had been struggling since the pandemic, but now his five guest rooms were going to be fully occupied for three weeks in June.” Nico is the heart and soul of Splendido and while it may not be as flashy as his friend Gianfranco’s Grand Hotel Castello Bella Vista (Ginny’s original destination), it is charming and comfortable.

As the five strangers get to know each other, they start to reveal their personal struggles to each other and form a sort of de facto family, offering each other support, encouragement and solace. I mean, it sounds awesome, right?

A little too awesome, really, which I guess is my main issue with the story. Look, there is nothing wrong with this book if you like fairy tales. Like the self-help book about repairing relationships Ginny buys at the airport, The Little Italian Hotel offers trite remedies for its characters. Even Ginny realizes those easy soundbites are hokum in the end.