The Wrong Suitcase by Laura Jane Williams

RIGHT PLACE
As she touches down in Italy, Izzy couldn’t be more excited. She’s needed a reason to let her hair down, and she knows that the wedding of the year in a lavish Tuscan castle will be just the ticket…

RIGHT TIME
On the morning of his best friend’s wedding, everything is going wrong for Sam. And when he finally reaches the hotel and unzips his luggage, his day goes from bad to worse…

WRONG SUITCASE
Izzy has a case full of men’s shirts and chinos. Sam has a case full of make-up palettes and bikinis. Could a fateful meeting to switch their bags back be the start of something special? Because in losing their luggage, they’re about to find each other…

I spent a couple hours reading this during a cold January evening, and I enjoyed being whisked away on a sunny Italian vacation. I love Italy, and I loved the sound of the plot but there were a few things missing for me. You need to be ready to suspend a lot of disbelief with this one. The likelihood that a hotel would mix your bag up with someone else’s and then just let you keep it instead of hand it over to them once you notified them of the mix-up is low. That just would not happen. And honestly, I’d be livid if I found out that the person who had my bag went down to the front desk to try and remedy the problem and was then allowed to just take my bag back to his room when he realized a quick fix wasn’t going to happen. But neither character really cares, even though their wedding attire is in those bags and they need them right away. Maybe I’m just an anxious person, but if my bag were lost I’d be panicking and staying in one place so it could be returned to me easily. I would not be wandering all over the place, in and out of the other hotel rooms where my friends were staying when I knew someone was looking for me to return my bag and to get theirs. I’ve got important stuff in there! Anyway, I digress. lol.

The romance was very insta-love and things got physical quickly. This is a vacation romance after all, so I knew what I was getting into but it didn’t feel emotional or romantic to me. It was all lust because they had nothing to go off of other than looks and suitcase contents. I was looking for a lighter, funnier story and I didn’t get that with this one. I found myself skimming as the two leads traversed the hotel looking for each other. For being such a short book, a LOT of time is spent with these two people trying to find one another. I didn’t like how they ended up finally meeting and how the romance went from here. Again, it just didn’t feel romantic. There was no character development or development of the romance. No real depth. And I know this is a novella, so what was I expecting? But I have read some amazing novellas with fully fleshed-out characters and very deep, swoony romances. So length of story is not the problem here. The problem is that so much time was wasted on searching for suitcases. I also hated Izzy’s character and found her to be incredibly selfish and self-absorbed. Sam was ok, but nothing special. The idea was cute, but I needed more. The descriptions of the scenery, however, were great!