If you're interested in a love story taking place in a gorgeous Italian/Sicilian setting, then check out "To Sicily with Love" by Jennifer Probst.
What was your inspiration behind your most recent book?
I loved the idea of a woman who believes she has it all, loses it, and realizes maybe she was looking in all the wrong places the whole time. We are obsessed with success in this society, so examining individual journeys fascinate me, especially when life brings us loss and change.
What does Reading Rainbow mean to you?
Reading what you love, no matter what anyone tells you. Reading stories that proudly feature LGBTQ characters and a wide variety of backgrounds. Not being afraid to show what you’re reading. Welcoming stories from all walks of life in order to grow and imagine new perspectives. There should be no banned books. We have a right to read what we want.
Why do you feel representation of a variety of people is so important when it comes to writing books?
I can only imagine life from a straight white female perspective. When I read books that are outside my safe zone — what I know — it opens me up to so many more possibilities in how I see the world. Diverse stories are needed to grow, learn empathy, and shake ourselves out of our safe zones. Writing them allows people to experience different lives through the pages of a book and usually, allowing readers to come away with more depth and understanding. It’s so important to write a variety of characters with no limits on how or who they love.
Tell us a little more about the book and why you decided to write it.
"To Sicily with Love" has many different themes I wanted to explore, mainly how grief affects our lives, and what success really means to us. Aurora believes she has everything she ever wanted until she loses her mother, and is thrown into a deep grief she can’t seem to pull out of. This leads her to lose everything she valued. When she finds out she has a family in Sicily she never knew about, she travels there in the summer to meet them. Through the weeks, she realizes things about her life she never examined and bonds with a new family and romance she never expected. I always believed travel changes people. I wanted to write about the old world traditions in Sicily and the unexpected beauty of pulling back in our lives from work in order to see a bigger world.
What can fans expect from your book?
My Meet me in Italy series has been popular for certain main elements readers will always find. A strong female heroine; a gorgeous Italian/Sicilian setting; deep emotion; family; romance; and always humor.
What's up next for you in the bookish world?
I’m always working on new ideas to bring to my readers and write in a variety of genres. My next release is a romcom set in the Outer Banks called "The Reluctant Flirt," which comes out in July. And I’m currently working on another book about an estranged family who travels Europe in a series of misadventures. If readers sign up for my newsletter at www.jenniferprobst.com/subscribe they will receive a free book!
