James DeRosa has spent most of his disenchanted young life looking for love…and leaving a string of disappointing relationships behind him. When he travels to Mussolini’s Rome for a semester abroad with his boys, he hopes a change of scenery will turn his fortunes, and he’s right.

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James soon finds what he believes to be the perfect woman—an Italian beauty whose unreasonable reservations and penetrating charm seduce his curiosity and capture his affections. That is, until Lady Fortune intervenes and introduces a mischievous French artist who wastes no time painting over the picture in James’s heart and leaving him torn between two women.

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Aided by his incorrigible classmates and fueled by an endless supply of cocktails and cigarettes, James struggles to maintain his sanity—and his grades—amidst the misadventures and madness of life abroad. As the clock runs down on his time in Rome, he must decide which woman to pursue…and what kind of man he wants to become.

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His loyalty will be tested, his character exposed, and his soul laid bare as he faces a choice: to love or to be loved.

If he’s lucky, he just might get both.