Author(s): Esther Freud

Fiction.

It is July, three months after Lara's seventeenth birthday, and one week before the much-anticipated Royal Wedding between the Prince of Wales and his teenage bride. Lara is about to leave for Italy, for a summer holiday with her distant, charismatic father. At Via Campanelli they are greeted by the cool, elegant Caroline whose sardonic composure leaves Lara tongue-tied and awkward. But as Lara's skin begins to turn golden, she begins to find herself relaxing, seduced by the limpid beauty of the place. When she is taken for dinner at the villa of the neighbouring Willoughbys, she finds herself suddenly under new scrutiny. Though thrown and embarrassed by the glamour and noisy ebullience of the family, Lara is drawn to Kip, a carelessly beautiful boy a couple of years older than her. But a summer spent under the spell of the Willoughbys will leave her changed forever. Full of heady, hot afternoons and shady, cool palazzos, "Love Falls" is an unforgettable story about families, and about adolescence in all its desperate awkwardness and breathless excitement. It is a beautiful, lyrical and troubling novel from the acclaimed author of "Hideous Kinky".