If you decide to read this book, expect lots of Shakespeare quotes, and not just from the tale of Juliet and her Romeo (although having a familiarity with that play wouldn't hurt you). I really enjoyed the few academic discussions that the characters have. It was nice to get all of the different perspectives on one of Shakespeare's most famous tragedies. There are, however, very few academic discussions. The bulk of the book is Kate and Verona native Giacomo trying to outwit the other students at the seminar. It's very soap-opera-like, with the two of them pretending to fall in love after Kate overhears a plan to set them up. Actually, maybe not so much like a soap opera, but like a couple of other famous plays: A Midsummer Night's Dream and Twelfth Night. There are a lot of romantic entanglements and mistaken advances all around. It's both comedic and familiar.

The parts of the book that I actually liked most involved Kate's two friends back home, not her classmates in Italy. Her two best friends in Kansas make a bet when Kate leaves for Italy. They wager a necklace against a pair of boots on her love life, and then dissect her emails and compose replies together while they try to determine whether or not she is falling for an Italian boy. Their excitement over tearing all of Kate's emails apart is infectious, and I wish they were in the book more. Somewhere along the way, though, Kate doesn't have time to send emails or the community computer is in use whenever she tries to gain access to it, so their appearances are few and far between.

This book was good, but it wasn't great. There are a lot of particularly good scenes and bits of dialogue, but overall, it's all been done before, so it's easy to see where everything is going, where each plot line will lead. On the plus side, it's an incredibly quick read, and even the easy-to-foresee parts are enjoyable.