Three Steps Over Heaven (Italian: Tre metri sopra il cielo, which literally means Three meters above the sky) is an Italian novel by Federico Moccia. It was first published in 1992, but becomes hugely popular only with its reprint in 2004. Only one year before the success of The Twilight Saga, in Italy there was another popular teen romance novel, targeted explicitly at teenage audiences. The plot is basic: good girl falls in love with Troubled, but Cute boy.
Due to the popularity with the Target Audience in early 2000s, Moccia also wrote a sequel in 2006, Ho voglia di te ("I want you"), and both books have a movie adaptation. A few years later, a Spanish remake of the film (Tres metros sobre el cielo) and relative sequel (Tengo ganas de ti) were released. In 2017, eleven years after Ho voglia di te, another sequel titled Tre Volte Te was released as a conclusion of the story, but it's the only one without a movie adaptation.
The 2020 Netflix series Summertime is inspired by this saga.
Tre Metri Sopra il Cielo provides examples of:
- Adaptation Dye-Job: We go from the blue-eyed blonde Babi of the book to the brown-eyed brunette Babi of the movie.
- Adaptation Name Change: The Spanish remake changes the name of several characters. Stefano/Step becomes Hugo nicknamed "Hache", Pallina becomes Katina, Paolo becomes Alex, etc.
- Aerith and Bob: Among all the characters only known by strange nicknames (Step, Babi, Pollo, Pallina, etc.), there are also characters with normal Italian names (Daniela, Paolo, Maddalena).
- All Girls Want Bad Boys: Babi falling for stereotypical bad boy Step.
- Beta Couple: Pollo and Pallina (respectively, Step's best friend and Babi's best friend) start a relationship before the two protagonists.
- Bratty Teenage Daughter: Babi's whiny, boy-crazy sister Daniela, who is two or three years younger than her.
- Delinquents: Step and his friends. When Babi starts dating Step, she reluctantly starts to get involved in their criminal lifestyle.
- Downer Ending: After the death of Step's best friend, Babi decides to break up with him.
- Dude Magnet: Babi, and is aware of it. During an argument with her friend, she claims to be the biggest Dude Magnet in her school.
- Everyone Loves Blondes: Babi in the book. The movie version popularizes the brunette version of Babi, which was also used in the Spanish remake.
- Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling:
- Babi is mature and a brilliant student (Responsible), Daniela is a shallow Bratty Teenage Daughter who only thinks about boys and often lies to her parents (Foolish).
- Step is a delinquent (Foolish), his older brother Paolo is formal, well-dressed, and has a good job (Responsible).
- One-Gender School: Babi attends a private, all-female school.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: All the main characters, whose first names are almost never used. Not only we have "Babi" (we can assume it's a nickname) and Step (Stefano), but Babi's best friend is nicknamed Pallina ("Little Ball") while Step's best friend is nicknamed Pollo ("Chicken"). In the sequel, there's also Gin, short for Ginevra.
- Star-Crossed Lovers: Babi and Step. Even if they are madly in love, their worlds are too different and their relationship doesn't end up well.
- Troubled, but Cute: The whole point of Step's character. He has a Cool Bike, is violent, part of a gang of delinquents, leather jacket, has a Freudian Excuse, is extremely handsome, and shows his heart of gold when he falls in love with the female protagonist.
- Uptown Girl: Rich girl Babi. Delinquent Step.
Ho Voglia di Te provides examples of:
- Contrasting Sequel Protagonist: Gin, the new female lead and Step's Second Love, is a rebellious Manic Pixie Dream Girl, the opposite of the uptight Babi from the first book.
- Love Triangle: Step, Gin, and Babi. Babi is a Romantic False Lead here, and we are clearly supposed to root for Gin.
- Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Gin, the free-spirited, upbeat, beautiful woman, who starts a relationship with the brooding Anti-Hero Step. Deconstructed, due to Gin's stalkery tendencies.
- Maybe Ever After: Step and Gin. The ending is ambiguous, but it's implied they will get back together.
- Older and Wiser: Step is still cocky, but no longer a hoodlum, and he finds a normal job.
- Really Gets Around: Daniela, Babi's boy-crazy sister, is now sexually promiscuous. She gets pregnant in a club's toilet, without even knowing the father's name.
- Romantic False Lead: Babi, in this book. Step meets his ex-girlfriend Babi at a party, and they sleep together. Immediately after that, Babi tells him that she's getting married and doesn't want to see him anymore. This affair with Babi is only used to create some drama in his new relationsip with Gin.
- Stalker with a Crush: Gin. At first it looks like a normal Boy Meets Girl story, but later it's revealed that Gin has been obsessed with Step for years, and she had many pictures of him and knew everything about his life, much time before they actually met each other. Even their "casual" first meeting was planned by the girl.
- Stalking is Love: When Step finds out in Gin's diary that she has been stalking him for a long time, he's actually pleased and even more attracted to her.
- Teen Pregnancy: While she doesn't know who is the father, Daniela decides to keep her baby, despite her young age.
Tre Volte Te provides examples of:
- Betty and Veronica: Gin is the Betty, Babi is the Veronica, due to Gin's personality change. Gin is Step's perfectly sweet but boring fiancée, while Babi is the hot Old Flame who returns to mess up with Step's feelings. Unlike the previous book, Babi wins.
- Characterization Marches On:
- Step has completely lost his "bad boy" streak. Now, he's a rich, dull, contemplative guy who's bored with his life and spends his time thinking about the past.
- In the second book, Gin was a free-spirited, assertive, and determined girl who was willing to do crazy things for love. In this book, she's a saintly and long-suffering Extreme Doormat.
- Extreme Doormat:
- Gin. When she finds out that Step has been cheating on her with Babi throughout most of the book, she decides to turn a blind eye and doesn't tell Step anything, despite being pregnant. She doesn't even tell Step that she has a terminal illness, until she actually dies, after giving birth to the baby.
- Step is also more passive, he just lets the things happen to him. He barely even reacts when Babi suddenly reveals to him that he's the father of Babi's six-year-old son. And he doesn't even react when Pallina suddenly gives him a letter from Step's deceased friend Pollo with an extremely important revelation about the real reason of Pollo's death... after more than eight years.
- First Girl Wins: Step ends up with Babi, the first girl introduced in the first book, and the first girl Step fell in love with.
- Jerkass: Step and Babi.
- Just because she's unsatisified with her own marriage (not to mention, treating her husband badly), Babi deliberately chases after her ex-boyfriend Step who is now in a happy relationship with another woman, even when Step is about to marry Gin.
- Step cheats on his pregnant wife Gin, just because Gin is too "perfect and boring", he can't resist the hotness of his ex-girlfriend Babi, and even secretly buys an attic where he and Babi can spend their time together. And after Gin's death, he moves in with Babi, ready to live with her, his and Babi's son, and Gin's newborn baby.
- Rags to Riches: Step has become a very rich and important television producer.
- The Reveal: We knew Pollo died in a motorcycle accident at the end of the first book. Here, thanks to a very old letter written by Pollo before his death, we learn that before dying, Pollo had recently found out that he had a disability and the doctor wanted to force him to use a wheelchair. So, Pollo intentionally drugged himself the day of the motorcycle accident, and his death was actually a suicide.
- Riches to Rags: Former rich girl Babi loses her wealth after her divorce from her rich husband, especially since Babi's own family is not wealthy anymore.
- Your Son All Along: Babi and her husband's kid, Massimo, turns out to be Step's child. Babi has always known that, but she decides to tell Step only when the kid is six years old.
