Eternal by Lisa Scottoline

 Elisabetta, Marco, and Sandro have been friends forever. Now it's 1937, they're in high school, and everything is changing. The three friends live in Rome in the era of Mussolini. At the beginning, life is good, but then the threat of war becomes more imminent and policies against the Jews of Rome start appearing, which impacts all three friends because Sandro and his family are Jewish.

Marco is a rising star in the  Fascist party. Sandro is a brilliant mathematics student hoping to study with one of his idols at the university. And Elisabetta is a veritable orphan who has to find a way to support herself. But the three friends are always there for each other--even when both boys fall in love with Elisabetta and are competing for her heart.

I hadn't read any books about Italy during the war, and now this is the second one I've read recently. It seems like most WW2 in Europe books are set somewhere else--England, France, a concentration camp--so it's fascinating to see how the war impacted a big, bustling city like Rome. And it's always important to see how love, loyalty, and friendship can see you through life's most challenging moments. 

The author notes that although these characters are fictional, she incorporated real events into their story along with some historical figures from the time.