The One-Way Ticket

If there’s one thing you need to know about Rome, it’s that you should ask if Giuseppe has a girlfriend before you make out with him in the backseat of a taxi.

At twenty-four years old, Jamie Varon’s freelance design company took off after a brief stint as an internet celebrity. With her career locked down, she peeked around the corner, saw that the next step was the white picket fence, said “screw that,” and sprinted in the opposite direction. Her only cure against the come-hither of suburbia? She bought a one-way ticket to Europe. Armed with nothing more than the intoxication of freedom, Jamie flirted with descendants of Roman gods, traipsed through London and Paris, and used an alter-ego to infiltrate a wild group of study abroad students. Out of her element, she learned the minutiae of romance and love from the best teachers: foreign men with broken English and healthy sex drives.

A collection of stories that span across Europe, this memoir is equal parts sexy, heartbreaking, and romantic.