The Love Academy by Belinda Jones

I am sure many of you are chick lit lovers and I am sure that if you love chick lit then at some point you must have read Belinda Jones books! Belinda Jones has travelled to many different countries through her life due to her work and this shows in her books. She has a way of making you feel as if you are in the same country when you are reading any of her books and this book, The Love Academy is one of them. The book is set in Italy and after reading this book I feel a trip is in order for me!!

Kirsty Bailey is a reporter for Hot magazine, she has a new undercover report to do on The Love Academy. This is where all the single Brits who are unlucky in love and who I struggling to believe in that little thing called romance go to see romance first hand by the true romantics, the Italians!
The problem is for Kirsty is she is already in a relationship so she needs to put this aside in order to find out if The Love Academy is the real deal or if it is a glorified Brothel!!
Kirsty takes her newly broken hearted brother with her to get a brother/sister concept on The Love Academy. Unfortunately her brother is not overjoyed to be going back to Italy as this is where he had his heart broken question is will The Love Academy be able to mend his broken heart?

I love the character of Kirsty, she feels like your normal girl next door. She is in a relationship with Joe but like most of us the romance has sort of dwindled away leaving her wanting a little bit more. Her relationship with her brother comes into the story a lot which only helped to relate to her character making her feel real.

The book is very much romantic based which is to be expected from the title and from the location the book is set in but each part of the course at The Love Academy is also teaching them different aspects of romance which makes for a loving read. I didn't find that the book was predictable which helped to keep us as the reader gripped, I found myself closing the book at the end of a chapter only having to open it up again to read the next as I needed to know what was going to happen next!

I liked that the book was on an even keel from the first chapter we are brought straight into the story and even the ending was wrapped up nicely without it feeling rushed.
All in all I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The book is 400 pages long and it is defiantly a chick-lit, romance book but it does have a little more depth to the story than many other chick-lit books and I think this is due to the amount of information about Venice itself, the sights they see and the food they eat and even down to the little bits of Italian which is spoken.

I would recommend this book although I would put a warning with it as since reading this book I now have the urge to go to Venice!!