Rachel Barnett – The Italian Lakes Affair

Share the Page:

Today I’m thrilled to welcome to my blog today Rachel Barnett to talk about her latest book The Italian Lakes Affair.

Rachel Barnett is a former primary school teacher who is lucky enough to live in the spectacular Wiltshire countryside a few miles from Stonehenge. She shares her home with a couple of Labradors who are expert on snoring (oh, and the rest of the family, too).

She writes contemporary women’s fiction for Boldwood Books set against wonderful escapist backdrops.

Her new novel – The Italian Lakes Affair, set on the banks of glamorous Lake Garda, is now out in all formats!!

Amy’s life runs like clockwork – as personal assistant to a notoriously sharp-tongued celebrity food critic, she’s used to managing chaos without ever creating any of her own. But everything changes when she’s sent to a prestigious Italian cookery school and meets Tad, the enigmatic and quietly brilliant head chef running the show.

As sparks fly in the kitchen, Amy finds herself drawn into a world far removed from the one she’s always known. But with her demanding boss determined to be the centre of attention – and possibly Tad’s too – Amy must decide if she’s ready to step out from behind the scenes and take a chance on love.

Welcome Rachel and thank you for coming to chat me today, I loved your new book. Casa del Cibo sounds idyllic. But before we start, can I interest you in a coffee and maybe a slice of this new recipe I discovered recently – smiley emoji – Nanna Gold’s Chocolate Mousse Cake?

Ha ha – perfect with a dribble of cream or just as it is. Either way, I’d love some!

It was such a fun idea to include recipes in the book, I’m dreaming of fig and filo tart and I’ve got white peaches on my shopping list, but where did these recipes come from?

All over the place! Cooking is central to the story, and I wanted to include recipes which reflected the characters of each of the main players. I also needed to link them to the cookery lessons happening in Casa del Cibo – it was a bit of a logistical nightmare for a while, to be honest. In the end I opted for sweet recipes to keep a thread running through the recipes, too. And, well, who doesn’t love puddings?!

Italy offers so many sensational recipes it was very difficult to narrow down my choice, but I used a variety of friends’ favourites and yummy ideas from the internet to make my final choices.

What are your own feelings about sourdough?

Mixed… I had a go at making a sourdough starter during lockdown, like many people. Called it Harold. But never managed to use it very effectively. And it was so needy (excuse the pun) – needed to be fed and checked and kissed. Maybe not the last one 😉, but it got to be a hassle, so I froze it, and then eventually threw it out. I like eating sourdough. I do not like making it!

I loved the setting for this book, Riva, Lake Garda and the Monte Baldo sound amazing, is Italy somewhere you’ve visited often?

I have to be honest and say I haven’t been there for a while. After years of talking about it, though, I am visiting this summer, with a friend – we’re taking a trip to a cookery school near Venice! Too late for research on this book, but Venice is bound to give me inspiration for a new story idea, don’t you think?

My towns are always fictional, (even if they were based on a combination of certain places in my head). I always worry about setting things in real places, but how do you find writing about actual towns etc.?

I did lots of research on Riva – I follow lots of people on YouTube who visit fantastic places and film them, so I went on a few street walks through the town. I got a guidebook for Lake Garda to help with the geography and what’s on offer. I try not to get too specific with shop locations etc; the cookery school and its street setting were both completely fictional. I tend to use a mixture of real and imagined – best of both worlds!

I’ve only had a suitcase that didn’t make it on the same flight as me once? It’s a nightmare, has this ever have happened to you? Has it changed the way you pack? What would be one item that you would always make sure was in your hand luggage?

It happened to my other half and our friend a couple of years ago, luckily on the way home rather than the way out on a ski trip. But it was an experience I won’t forget – the stress and uncertainty of what was happening was challenging. I remembered the feeling as I wrote Amy’s arrival in The Italian Lakes Affair.

We also had our flight cancelled last year after our bags had been checked in at Geneva airport – that took a team effort to sort out…My daughter and her friend were waiting at different luggage carousels to see where our bags would reappear, another friend was waiting at oversized baggage for the ski bags, my other half and I were waiting in the queues for hotel vouchers for the overnight wait, I got shouted at by a Scandinavian woman who thought I was standing in the wrong place when it came to getting transfer vans to the hotels, my phone decided to freeze so I couldn’t let anyone at home know what was happening… It was bedlam!

I always put important things in hand luggage. Precious jewellery. Laptop. My daughter has some very special toy rabbits, she’s had them since she was a baby and if she brings them on a trip, they are always in her hand luggage. They tell you to keep phone chargers and powerpacks in hand luggage – annoying to have cables everywhere, but worth it when your phone battery runs down and you need to recharge! So those are important. Also a book to read (GenX) or earbuds (Gen Z) when you have to sit in the airport for hours waiting for EasyJet to defrost their plane wings… And snacks. Lots of snacks.

You have such a wonderful cast of characters thrown together here. Billie Forsythe-Rogers is such an interesting and complex character – I would imagine she was really fun to write, where do your ideas for characters come from?

The ideas come from anywhere and everywhere. I tend to take snippets of behaviours from real people and mesh them together to make my characters. Billie was fun because she was unremittingly awful – so entitled and lacking empathy for those around her. I’ve met people who don’t seem to understand their impact on those around them, but I like my characters to have something about them which makes us want them to come good in the end and she did have her reasons for behaving the way she did.

I think when we spoke that you said, you have a six-book contract and are contracted for two books a year, so what does a writing day for you look like?

If I get a clear day for writing, it’s a miracle…! Usually, I’m grabbing a few hours here and there. But when it does happen, I hide away in my office – a room above the garage I rescued from being a dumping ground and turned it into a fabulous space which makes me smile every time I set foot in it. It’s my place to have everything exactly as I want it. It’s also quite large, so I have a sofa and chairs up there as well as my desk, perfect for reading or chilling out – quite honestly, I’d live up there if I could. I tend to average writing a thousand words a day – that seems to be my sweet spot. Sometimes I can do more, but I’m not one of these writers who can churn out five or ten thousand words in a day, my brain starts getting mushy at around the two and a half thousand mark.

Would you say you were a pantser or a plotter?

By nature, I’m a pantser. I like to find out what’s going to happen at the same time as my characters. However, now I have a commercial contract to fulfil I don’t have time for that luxury. My editor also needs a decent idea of the book I’m proposing to write, which means I need more of a synopsis than knowing the beginning and the end point, and saying ‘stuff will happen’ in the middle… So, I have learnt to do more planning. I’d say I’m a plantser now!!

I loved Tad, when you write a male hero, do you have someone in mind who could play him when the book is commissioned for either a film or TV series, and if so – who?

With my very early books, published under a pen name, I had an entire cast list. My friend and I spent an excellent lunch deciding on actors for the roles. Her only stipulation was that she had to accompany me to the casting sessions!!

It’s not something I tend to do these days – my middle-aged vision of my main male character Tad is probably different to that of younger generations. Although I have a soft spot for Matthew Lewis – I think he’d suit well. Wonder if he can do a Scottish accent…?

Billie wanted to learn how to cook cacio e pepe and lemon tart. What one dish would you like included in Tad’s cookery lessons.

I’d like to learn how to make delicious ravioli. Basically, anything involving pasta and I’m happy…

Is there a restaurant near you, you think Billie would give a five-star review to? Or one that you’d recommend she visit?

Nope!! There are places I love which would deserve a five-star review from her, but they probably wouldn’t get it. She’s a vixen…

A question, another writer asked me last year, was what was on my vision board for 2026? So, I thought it would be fun to ask all my guests this year if they would share one item on their board for 2026 – I might come back to you to later in the year and ask whether you achieved it! So what would be one item on yours?

That’s an interesting question. I used to play the drums but sadly over the last few years I have neglected to pick up my drumsticks. I would very much like to get back to that. Maybe this will give me the nudge I need. Also, my daughter and I want to do ‘Couch to 5k’ over the summer. We’ll see how that goes… I would love to do a leatherwork course, so I need to look into that too!

I understand your next book – Escape to the Sun, set on a cruise to the Caribbean, will be out early August 2026. The research for this one sounds great, did you have to take a cruise – all in the interest of research?

Again, I seem to be doing everything backwards! I’ve just received the copy edits for Escape to the Sun, which need to be returned shortly before I take my aged dad on a cruise to the Norwegian Fjords. Not the Caribbean, but it will nonetheless be a fantastic experience. I know people who have been on cruises, so I picked their brains. A lot. I created my own ship, based on a mixture of Fred Olsen cruise liners, I follow vloggers on YouTube who post about superyachts and cruise ships and so I’ve used a mixture of reality and imagination to create the ship setting. For the islands, I had a wonderful time visiting via YouTube and I spent time with a chef to get a feeling for island cuisine and to watch her make her own version of black cake for the festive period. All great fun.

Thank you for dropping by today to chat, and good luck with publication. Anni x

Book link:

https://mybook.to/ItalianLakesAffair