Problematic Summer Romance

Taormina is the Sicilian town in which Problematic Summer Romance’s main storyline is set, and as a symbol, it includes the town itself, the villa, and Mount Etna. Hazelwood admits to taking poetic license with the villa, which she constructed from her favorite things about Taormina, and with the eruption of Mount Etna, which typically does not disrupt travel to the extent it does for dramatic tension in the novel. Hazelwood also includes real places from Taormina in the novel, such as the theater Maya attends with Conor and Avery. The island Maya and Conor chase Eli’s dog through in Chapter 29 is Isola Bella (Beautiful Island), a popular tourist site Hazelwood intentionally made deserted to further Maya and Conor’s romantic arc. Hazelwood’s creative leeway represents the power of storytellers to alter real-life events and locations for dramatic emphasis. It also shows how real life is typically not as outrageous or extraordinary as fiction, thus necessitating alterations such as those Hazelwood used.

By setting the main arc of the storyline exclusively in Taormina for a planned event that is interrupted by a natural event that stops travel, Hazelwood makes use of the forced proximity romance