What a fun book A Rosie Life in Italy was! Rosie, her husband and her son move from Ireland to Italy in hopes of expanding her wedding planning business. One thing after another happens, as well as living through the pandemic. At the start of the pandemic, they were about to buy a huge house in Italy which is in need of desperate work, and, of which relatives keep appearing to receive their share of the home sale! The story moves along and I can't wait to read about what happened next. Thanks to NetGalley, Ms Meleady and Sourcebooks for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

If you loved Under the Tuscan Sun, you’ll enjoy A Rosie Life in Italy. After many, and I mean many, trials and tribulations, (including the death of her sister and business partner, Eileen), Rosie and family pack up their household in Ireland and move to Italy! They find a huge, dilapidated house and in typical Rosie fashion, become obsessed! Buying a house in Italy is not for the faint of heart. As the closing day draws near, Covid brings everything to a halt.
This is the first book in the Rosie series. It was a a light read, filled with joy and optimism. It does have themes of addiction, death and Covid. I can see this as a Netflix series, the characters are delightfully rich and entertaining.

"A Rosie Life in Italy" was an engaging read as we follow Rosie and her family as they move and begin a new life in Italy. I love to travel and Italy is high on my list so I grateful to Net Galley for this ARC. The descriptions of Italy really hit you as a reader, along with the beautifully descriptive characterizations of the people met along the way. Highly recommend for anyone who loves to travel, or is thinking about a permanent move.

Rosie's biggest dream has always been to restore a beautiful house in a exotic country near a lake or a river.
However, life didn't make it that easy for her to fulfill that dream.
Rosie's career started as an inspiring magazine publisher turned into a destination wedding planner which allowed her to travel and see places around the world with her husband and 2 kids.
When they decided to leave Ireland to pursue that dream, life got in the way. Until, it was time to go to Italy and that's where their adventure started.
I really enjoyed reading this book. The way it was written wasn't like any other memoir but it felt like reading a novel.
It was full of joy, hope, and emotions
Grief was an important part of Rosie's story but at the same time she showed us the importance of believing and not giving up and dreaming of the better days and how family is important.

Highly recommend, make sure to add it to your TBR
Thank you to @netgalley and the publisher for granting me an ARC of #ARosieLifeinItaly in exchange for my honest review.

Xoxo😘

My favorite read this month. This book really resonates with me, and I laughed out loud frequently. It’s about taking risks. It’s about living your greatest life. It’s about adventure and gives credence that a family is a home wherever the address. The author is not afraid to expose her failures and how she handles the Covid epidemic is hilarious. I cannot help but share in her joy when things work out;it’s a feel good travel-family memoir. It’s a lesson in Italian bureaucracy. Moral to me: Follow your heart. Highly recommended.
Thanks to Sourcebooks for this ARC copy.

The blurb for this book led me to believe that this would be about an Irish family moving into their new home in Italy, with all the accompanying trials and tribulations. Instead it’s about living through Covid, and the drama involved in buying a house in Italy. It is reasonably entertaining, and has its moments, but I felt a little duped. I expect I will enjoy the book in the series (yes, I discovered after reading it that it’s the first in the “A Rosie Life in Italy” series) about Rosie and her family actually moving into the Italian home they’ve bought.

I received a free e-arc of this book through Netgalley.
I can't relate to this family with it's spontaneous house-buying and moving between countries at all, but that doesn't matter because it's written in such a fun and personable way that I found it very enjoyable. Rosie and her family are very flexible and go with the flow people although buying a house in Italy in the early days of covid definitely could've been a downer. They instead look at all the positives despite their setbacks.

Thank you #Netgalley for the copy. Wow Rosie has been through a lot, so many moves, career opportunities all while keeping her family safe and afloat. Though she fell in love with Italy, initially the time was not right, her kids were in school, her parents were back home, how could she leave everyone behind? But so many twists of fate eventually brought her family to Italy, they settle, find a home they love, then covid hits. It delays their home purchase, basically shuts down their business and so much more. We watch as they carry on through the hardships to try to live out their dream.

I enjoyed this tale of starting a new life and all of the trials and tribulations that go with it. The author is honest about the difficulties that she and her family encountered- definitely not your typical book about this subject.

When the weather gets you down and the rent doubles what can you do? Move to Italy of course. This is a delightful read as we travel with Rosie and her family to begin a new life in Italy. Along the way we meet many enjoyable characters and experience vicariously the move to a new land. All is not sunshine and light though, there is also tragedy and trouble. A great read for all those who love to travel. It may make you think twice about a permanent move.
Thanks to #NetGalley#ARosieLifeInItaly and #SourceBooks for the EArc.

What a fascinating read. I had previously read that housing in especially Ireland was becoming so unaffordable for the locals. This book was quite interesting to read. The intricacies of Italian property sales and inheritance makes our South African red tape almost look easy
Its brave to undertake a renovation, even braver to attempt one in a foreign country and pure madness to address this all during a global pandemic.
I look forward to reading more of the adventures of Rosie and her family in Italy.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for allowing me to read this book.

"A Rosie Life in Italy" is a delightful read, brimming with charm and wit. Hard to believe it is not fiction. Three aspects particularly stood out for me: the vivid and evocative descriptions of the Italian countryside, which carry you straight to the heart of Italy; the warm, relatable characters who bring the story to life; and the engaging narrative that blends humor and heartfelt moments seamlessly. This book is a perfect escape for anyone dreaming of an idyllic Italian adventure.

An enjoyable non-fiction read about an Irish woman who dreams of buying a home in Italy and settling there with her family. It wasn't exactly what I was expecting as it's close to the halfway point of the book before Rosie and her family actually make it to Italy. The first half of the book is background about the obstacles Rosie and her husband, Ronan, faced over several years as they tried to make their dream a reality. When the family does make it to Italy, their plans are further discrupted by the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and much of the second half of the book takes place during the lockdown period. This is, however, the first in a series of several books (at least 5) and presumably the follow-up books are more focused on renovating the house and settling in Italy.

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks for sending a digital ARC of this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

Can I just move to Italy now?
Rosie provides a deep look into her life and the decision to uproot her Irish family to Italy. The trials she must undergo professionally and personally hit their peak with the COVID pandemic. And it leaves us wondering, like Rosie’s friends, would quarantine have been a little better in the Tuscan hills with a glass of wine?

I am unsure about this book - there are six "Rosie Life" books listed on Amazon. I don't know if this is a compilation of all of those books, or if this one "stands alone," but I was very disappointed in this book. Rosie has had a series of unfortunate events. She wanted to start a wedding planning business with her sister, but then her sister passed away suddenly. Her life is one upheaval after another. The family sells there home in Ireland to move to Spain, but then they come back to Ireland and purchase a money pit of a house, which they eventually abandon and allow to go into foreclosure because they are behind on their payments. They then move to Spain, and then eventually end up in Italy.
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The book is filled with one disjointed story followed by another. It was a disappointment for me and I won't be recommending it to fellow readers.

Brave souls, Rosie! I guess some folks will do anything to live their dreams. And some succeed! She's lucky to have such a supportive family. Kudos Rosie Meleady! The book has lots of funny moments and others that were just plain heart stopping, in my opinion. I do wish her and her family well and I did enjoy the book. Maybe it will a catalyst for some other person with wanderlust to take the leap!

This book was funny to read because this Women named rosie at such an adventurous spirit. Things never let her get down. Family was also amazing. They lived in ireland they always dreamed of going to spain or italy. She had different jobs to keep the family going. She became a wedding planner for destinations and this was a pretty lucrative business for her when her other job suddenly closed. Her sister And rosie wanted to go to spain to start their W e d d I n Destination. Her sister died.So they were lost what to do so they got.
In caravan and decided to take a trip to italy. They had a lot of fun there and then they made their way back home. They sold First home to make the trip. They bought another home but it was really a money pit.Because I had to keep fixing it. They decided to rent for a while and see what they really want to do. The kept the dream alive.I'm going to italy for the W e d I n d destination going. This woman was determined to keep going no matter what. When one door closed it, she always found another way to open another door to make money. Then they decided to buy another house and this took time because of the pandemic, so many different obstacles in your life.. This house was italy and she really loved it. You can always make your Dreams Come true. Rosie did.

Thanks kindly to NetGalley and Sourcebooks for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I actually quite liked this book. It reads a bit like eat, pray, love but without the divorce and heartbreak.

It's really about embracing change, taking chances and rediscovering ourselves. Which I love for the author, and hope I can apply an inch of that too in my real life.

I got really into the book at the start, but sometimes found it a bit difficult to pick back up again. It's a bit too much chaos and change for my personal taste, but those characteristics of her story so you can't really change that. Overall a decent read.

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.

In this charming and realistic memoir, Rosie Meleady explores the highs and lows of international moves in the context of hurricanes, COVID-19, personal tragedies, and starting a new wedding planning business. Following Meleady, her family, and her dogs, she hilariously recounts the struggles, confusions, and successes of their process of relocating to Italy, language barrier and all. Realistic and honest, Meleady does not shy away from the difficulties they faced during this time. A fun, enjoyable, and fast read, Meleady’s prose is comedic, engaging, and friendly, as if she is engaging in conversation with each of her readers. With all of this chaos and excitement, fans of the memoir genre and of travelogs will definitely enjoy Meleady’s book as she combines the two genres in this engaging narrative. For those interested in following in similar footsteps, Meleady will help prepare you for some of the challenges of living as an expat and integrating into the new local community, especially when language barriers and buying housing are involved. With her delightful prose, engaging narrative voice, and an immersive and chaotic story, Meleady’s memoir is a great read reminiscent of Italian summers and the joys and fears of travel and exploring new countries for the first time.