Capers

Hazel has a secret.

All she wants to do this summer is hang around the beach with friends, but her aunt surprises her with an awesome trip to Italy. Only it’s not so awesome after all – at least not to Hazel. For any other 17-year old girl, Italy would be a dream come true, but Hazel’s dream is much closer to home. In fact, it’s right next door, where the girl she’s crushed on for years is moving. But how can she tell that to her parents?

Unable to confess the real reasons for wanting to stay home, Hazel is whisked off to Europe with her Aunt Vix who has a few secrets of her own. They settle in the Apulia region where Hazel meets Aunt Vix’s circle of friends: Rocco, Nunzio, and Isabella, a girl so beautiful she takes Hazel’s breath away and makes that beach vacation nothing more than a distant memory, and when Isabella sees that same beauty in Hazel, together they create a summer of discovery, fun and romance.

But new friends and lovers are not all Hazel finds in Italy; she and her new friends wind up trapped in a string of tourist robberies, robberies that jeopardize not only Aunt Vix’s work, but her secrets as well. With the help of Rocco and Isabella, Hazel works to find the key to solving the robberies, all while trying to find the key to her own happiness.

And maybe that happiness means being honest with her family, her friends – and most of all herself – for the first time ever.