The Juliet Club by Suzanne Harper is about Kate, a high school student who wins an essay contest about her favorite Shakespeare play and is invited to spend the summer in Italy studying Romeo and Juliet. Her friends in the United States are confident that Kate will fall in love over the summer, but prim and proper Kate is equally as sure of the opposite. Kate and her father end up staying at the mansion of the world's foremost expert on Shakespeare (much to her father's chagrin, for he fancies himself as the foremost expert). While there she meets many friends who have also been selected to participate in the summer seminar, including Silvia, a dark and brooding Italian beauty, and Giacomo, a playboy who is only interested in flirting. Silvia and her friends hatch a plan to get back at Giacomo for his flirtatious ways and force him and Kate to fall in love. Kate just happens to overhear the plan, and she and Giacomo create their own plan instead: to pretend that they've fallen in love and then expose the others' plot.This was a fun read. I don't know too much about Shakespeare's other plays, but I enjoyed the references to A Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, Henry V, and of course, Romeo and Juliet. All of the winners of the contest end up falling for someone unexpected and the story has a very happy ending!
