She invented the perfect Italian village. Now she has one week to make it real.
Karina Romano is brilliant at selling belonging for other people. Unfortunately, she is less brilliant at feeling like she belongs anywhere herself.
Overlooked at her New York PR agency and desperate to finally be taken seriously, Karina makes one tiny, catastrophic mistake: she tells a billionaire client that her grandmother came from a romantic little fishing village in Puglia called Santa Marina del Sole.
The problem?
Karina is not entirely sure the village exists.
When the client decides he wants to visit in person, Karina has one week to turn family myth, half-remembered Italian, and a very inconvenient postcard into the most authentic campaign of her career. But Santa Marina is not the polished dream she promised. It is smaller, messier, more beautiful, and very much already owned by the people who live there.
Especially Luca Vitale.
Luca is the village baker. Also the mayor. Also tall, infuriating, flour-dusted, and completely unimpressed by Karina’s “authenticity deliverables.” He does not want his home turned into a marketing campaign. Karina needs him to cooperate before her career collapses. Neither of them planned on dawn bakery lessons, candlelit arguments, an elderly care home that needs saving, one criminal donkey, or the slow, dangerous realization that the one thing Karina cannot fake is falling for him.
But the truth has a way of rising.
And when Karina’s beautiful lie threatens the village, the investment, and the man who has started to feel like home, she must decide what she is really willing to risk: the performance that finally got her seen, or the messy, honest belonging she never thought she deserved.
Baked With Love is a witty, heartfelt romantic comedy about slow-burn love, Italian sunshine, found family, fresh bread, professional panic, and the terrifying miracle of being seen exactly as you are.
Perfect for readers who love:
• small-town romantic comedy
• enemies-to-lovers banter
• grumpy baker heroes
• forced proximity in Italy
• slow-burn chemistry
• found family and emotional depth
• foodie romance with heart
• heroines rebuilding their lives
Baked with Love A Small-Town Italian Romantic Comedy
Sometimes the wrong village leads you home
