Varina Palladino’s Jersey Italian Love Story

It’s been a few years since DeFino’s The Bar Harbor Retirement Home for Famous Writers (and Their Muses), but it was worth the wait for this story of a big, boisterous Italian family that offers a lesson in New Jersey–inflected Italian. The family includes a couple of sons, their wives, exes, and kids; Donatella’s best friend, a gay man abandoned by his Italian family and taken in by hers; and “Vicky,” the haunted record-playing Victrola. The family matriarch, Sylvia, is approaching her 93rd birthday and is worried about her widowed daughter, Varina. Together with her favorite grandchild, Donatella, the two cook up a scheme to attract single grandfathers looking for love as possible matches for Varina. Meanwhile, Varina books herself a secret cruise and finds a new best friend, her daughter gets a diagnosis that surprises no one, and a new baby is on the way.