An Italian Scavenger Hunt

By Naperville Magazine
July 2026 View more Books

By Jeff Banowetz

Geneva-based author Annie Cathryn is happy to report that her husband is doing just fine.

Yes, her latest book, Eat the Cake, features a protagonist who lives in Geneva, has friends in Naperville, and displays a few other traits that friends of the author may find familiar, but the story itself is fiction. “It’s about a woman who unexpectedly loses her husband,” Cathryn says. “She’s a podcaster who gives advice for a living, but she finds that she can’t take her own advice after the loss.”

After an on-air meltdown, she takes a trip to Florence, Italy, that her late husband had planned without her knowledge. She ends up on a kind of scavenger hunt, which turns into a mystery about how and why this was planned. The book debuts this month, and Cathryn will be hosting a launch event July 25 at Swallow Stories Bookshop in Lisle.

Her first novel, The Friendship Breakup, was published in 2023, and she’s since become heavily involved in women’s fiction, writing it herself, interviewing other authors on her podcast, and starting her own publishing imprint, Moon Ray Books.

For those looking for a summer getaway, Eat the Cake offers a European adventure that explores the pressure to appear perfect online and the complexity of loss. It’s a “laugh-through-the-tears” book with a focus on personal discovery. “It’s about giving ourselves the permission to find joy, happiness, and romance again,” she says. “And what better place to do that than Italy?”

Photo: Ana Fertal Photography (headshot)