Playing with Fire by Tess Gerritsen

This novel has elements of family drama, bloody horror, mystery and history.  Half of the novel is set in the past, during WWII in Venice, Italy.  What starts the story off is the purchase of a piece of hand-written sheet music for a waltz, in a store in Rome, Italy, by the musician protagonist, Julia, in the present day.  Her present day life becomes altered, and she is certain the sheet music is to blame.

We then switch to the past, and meet the man who will ultimately compose the musical piece.  Lorenzo lives in Venice, Italy, and he is Jewish.  The reader sees the progressive exclusion of Italy's Jews through ever more horrible laws.  Boiling a frog comes to mind, with the local residents adapting to each progressive step, without seeing that it would lead to the Holocaust for Italy's Jews.

This is a novel written with a specific purpose in mind, to document the fate of almost every last members of Venice's Jewish community during World War Two, death.  The author provides an Afterword that explains her intentions, and that she wished to recall the suffering of people at the hands of really evil people, and to honor the good people too.  Another reason was to show the power of music to inspire and to change lives.

The novel alternates the narrative between the point of view of Julia in the present, and Lorenzo in the past, using the present tense for the modern day events, and the past tense for the historical events.  Present tense use is very popular these days since it gives an immediacy to a story.  I feel I must give a warning about a scene when a cat is killed in a horrific way, just off scene.

As Julia's horrors progress in the present, Lorenzo's horrors progress in the past.  If you dislike horrors, this is not the book for you!  I found the book creepy, sad, very depressing, and the plot a bit too thin.  The plot felt more like a construction made solely for the purpose of writing a Holocaust novel. 

Personally, I prefer to read non-fiction about that time, since the truth of that era is more twisted and horrible than any fiction writer can ever possibly imagine.  But if you enjoy Holocaust fiction, and Tess Gerritsen's writing style and penchant for horror, then you should enjoy this book.  If you happen to be a musician, too, you will enjoy it even more.

From the book's description:

Tess Gerritsen, the New York Times bestselling author of the Rizzoli & Isles series, now gives us a gripping stand-alone thriller.

In a shadowy antiques shop in Rome, Julia Ansdell happens upon a curious piece of music—the Incendio waltz—and is immediately entranced by its unusual composition. The mournful minor key and complex feverish arpeggios appear to dance with a strange life of their own.

Back in Boston, when Julia plays the notes for the first time, the music has a terrifying and unexplainable effect on her young daughter, who seems violently transformed.

Determined to track down the music score's origins, Julia travels to Venice—and uncovers a dark secret that not only dates back to the Second World War, but also directly involves a dangerously powerful family who will stop at nothing to keep Julia from bringing the truth to light.

Here is a direct link to the book's Amazon.com page.  Beware of different covers for this same book, so you don't accidentally order the book twice!

Please visit the author's website.

Falling in Love (Guido Brunetti Mystery) by Donna Leon

The latest books in this long police procedural/mystery series set in Venice, Italy, have read less like novels and more like novelizations of TV episodes.  Falling in Love is no exception.  The construction of the book is like an episode:  we meet the victim and see an incident, later the policeman is called in and he investigates, an action elevates the threat, and that threat continues until the exciting climax comes and the policeman leads the shaken woman home. 

What we don't get is Brunetti acting in any way to save the day or the victim.  I think the story could have existed, with very little change, without Brunetti being involved at all, which is quite odd.  If you are a diehard Brunetti fan, you will get your scenes with his family, his co-workers, his boss, his parents-in-law, and scenes of Brunetti wandering the beautiful streets and bridges of Venice.  We even have the requisite comment:

"We live in Paradise, don't we?"

However, we spend much of the book in the mind and life of the opera singer, Flavia.  We learn much about the life of an opera diva in Falling in Love, which I received as a review-copy.  The catch phrases "Too much information" and "More than I wanted to know" popped into my mind while reading this book.  But if you are an avid opera fan, you may find those parts of the book interesting.

Flavia was an abrasive character introduced in the first book in the series, who made a return in a later book.  Her back story is more hinted at than mined in this story, making some of the references by the character confusing if you have not read the previous two books in which she appears. 

Quickly:  she is a bisexual woman with an ex-husband and children, who had to give up her lesbian lover in order to not lose custody of her children during her divorce.  Her references to her past lesbian relationships are odd, to say the least, in Falling in Love, dismissing them as something akin to a hobby:  "having given that up".

Donna Leon's Brunetti novels are known for the abrasive views of the author intruding on the story.  But there are few of those intrusion in Falling in Love.  But there are some odd asides in Falling in Love, such as:

...Griffoni asked with the deference beautiful women -- if they are intelligent -- use when dealing with women who are less attractive than they are.

And much of the book is not about a crime or criminal, but about how horrible fans of celebrities can be:

...all these people crowding round, all of them wanting something, to tell you something about themselves.  They think they want to tell you how much they liked your performance, but what they really want is to make you remember them.  Or like them.

Most of the narration in the book is in third-person limited, but there is some omniscient narration, too.  The point-of-view is quite often Flavia's, but more often Guido Brunetti's.  Through Flavia's eyes, in the beginning of the book, we see Guido's trademark affection for his wife, his sense of humor and his self-deprecating attitude.  When we switch to Brunetti's point of view, we get to see how extremely observant he is, and how quickly he can read people.

The British single quotes in place of double quotes may annoy some readers.  And the abrupt ending will disappoint fans, just as it did in the previous book in the series.  The readers never gets to learn how the culprit managed the crimes. 

The books in the Guido Brunetti Mystery Series:

1. Death at La Fenice (reviewed on this site)
   
2. Death in a Strange Country
3. Dressed for Death
4. Death and Judgment
5. Acqua Alta
6. Quietly in Their Sleep
7. A Noble Radiance
8. Fatal Remedies
9. Friends in High Places
10. Sea of Troubles
11. Wilful Behavior
12. Uniform Justice
13. Doctored Evidence
14. Blood From a Stone
15. Through the Glass, Darkly
16. Suffer the Little Children
17. Girl of His Dreams
18. About Face
19. A Question of Belief
20. Drawing Conclusions
21. Beastly Things
22. The Golden Egg
23. By Its Cover (reviewed on this site)
    
24. Falling in Love (reviewed on this site)

From the book's description (some spoilers):

Donna Leon’s Death at La Fenice, the first novel in her beloved Commissario Guido Brunetti series, introduced readers to the glamorous and cutthroat world of opera and one of Italy’s finest living sopranos, Flavia Petrelli; then a suspect in the poisoning of a renowned German conductor.  Years after Brunetti cleared her name, Flavia has returned to Venice and La Fenice to sing the lead in Tosca.

Brunetti and his wife, Paola, attend an early performance, and Flavia receives a standing ovation.  Back in her dressing room, she finds bouquets of yellow roses; too many roses. Every surface of the room is covered with them.  An anonymous fan has been showering Flavia with these beautiful gifts in London, St. Petersburg, Amsterdam, and now, Venice, but she no longer feels flattered.

A few nights later, invited by Brunetti to dine at his in-laws’ palazzo, Flavia confesses her alarm at these excessive displays of adoration.  And when a talented young Venetian singer who has caught Flavia’s attention is savagely attacked, Brunetti begins to think that Flavia’s fears are justified in ways neither of them imagined.  He must enter in the psyche of an obsessive fan before Flavia, or anyone else, comes to harm.

Here is a direct link to the book at Amazon.com.

Visit the author's website.

This review is by Candida Martinelli, of Candida Martinelli's Italophile Site, and the author of the cozy-murder-mystery novel AN EXTRA VIRGIN PRESSING MURDER, and the young-adult/adult mystery novel series THE VIOLET STRANGE MYSTERIES the first book of which is VIOLET'S PROBLEM.

The Contessa's Vendetta by Mirella Sichirollo Patzer

Are you in the mood for some Gothic romantic revenge fiction set in the mid sixteen hundreds in Italy?  Even if this is not your favorite genre, the author's lyrical and lovely writing style may capture your heart.  We are treated to a first-person memoirs written by a woman who has voluntarily sequestered herself in a convent after a tumultuous young life.

Now, long after my ordeal is over, I want to narrate the events of one short year; the most agonizing year in my life...

Carlotta Mancini of Vicenza, Italy, was an extremely innocent woman, and dangerously wealthy, too.  She attracted cads and rakes, and one rake in particular, the sociopathic man she married.  The older Carlotta warns us of her shortsightedness along the rocky road, hinting at events to come in her tale.

Without doubt, he was the most majestic looking man I had ever encountered, and I, his late wife, still trembled in the wake of his splendor.

Carlotta offers many warnings to her female readers that they make their own messes with men, by allowing the men to abuse their emotions.

Woe the blindness of women.  With all our abilities; with all the world before us to conquer, we crumble at an abusive word or rude gesture by a man...

This is escapist fare of 370+ pages transports the reader to another world, Vicenza and Venice, Italy, in the 1600s.  We get high drama, Gothic horrors, death, ghosts, cunning plots galore, and the central vendetta is the story of extreme innocence turned to extreme hate. 

There were multiple moments when I mentally yelled at Carlotta to stop her deadly plot and turn to living life, but that was not to be.  She lost her mind early in the book because of a severe trauma, and became monomaniacal about her vendetta, not seeing the chances that were before her for a second chance at happiness.

From the book's description (some spoilers):

To be buried alive is everyone's worst nightmare, and when faced with the ultimate betrayal, a murderous vendetta is one woman's only solution.

A deadly plague is raging, killing thousands in 17th century Vicenza Italy.  Carlotta Mancini struggles to protect her family and servants, but despite her precautions, she is the one who falls prey to the deadly illness.

Her body is tossed into a coffin and swiftly buried in the underground, dank confines of her family’s vault.  But Carlotta is not dead; she is merely unconscious because of the illness.

She returns home to her beloved husband, her best friend, and her darling daughter.  But before she reveals herself to her loved ones, she learns of an endless series of lies, deceits, and betrayal.

As she unravels the labyrinth of shocking treachery, her wrath breathes life to an overwhelming need for vengeance.  Slowly, meticulously, she launches her diabolical vendetta.

The Contessa's Vendetta is a historical fiction thriller ripe with suspense from first page to last. A tale of betrayal and revenge that will hold you spellbound until the shocking ending!

The Contessa's Vendetta is a retelling of the classic novel, Vendetta by Marie Corelli.  Inspired by this epic classic novel; a new and captivating tale in a new setting, a new century, and with new plot twists while remaining faithful to key story elements.

Here is a direct link to The Contessa's Vendetta at Amazon.com:

 

This author is an established Indie author, with several quality books to her name, each with an attractive cover and book design.  Here are all her historical novels set in Italy, with direct links to the books at Amazon, through the images.

The Orphan of the Olive Tree
(click on the image to go to the book's Amazon.com page)

AWARDED THE B.R.A.G.G. MEDALLION for Indie Fiction

A compelling historical romance and family saga.  A blood oath, a dreadful curse, and the evil eye. A dark family secret that will shatter lives and the woman who must risk everything to keep it buried.

From two neighbouring villas in the heart of the Tuscan countryside to the elegance of Siena; from a world steeped in ancient superstitions to a culture where family honour is paramount comes, this multi-layered novel of the lives, loves, secrets and strivings of two women and their families in the 13th century.

The Contessa's Vendetta
(click on the image to go to the book's Amazon.com page)

The Contessa's Vendetta is a historical fiction thriller ripe with suspense from first page to last. A tale of betrayal and revenge that will hold you spellbound until the shocking ending.

The Contessa's Vendetta is a retelling of the classic novel, Vendetta by Marie Corelli. Inspired by this epic classic novel; a new and captivating tale in a new setting, a new century, and with new plot twists while remaining faithful to key story elements.




The Novice (reviewed on this site)
(click on the image to go to the book's Amazon.com page)

In 10th century Naples, Saracens run rampant, annihilating villages, murdering women and children.  Death and despair is everywhere.  Alone in the world, Sara is a young novice plagued with doubts about taking her final vows to become a nun.  When her convent is attacked, she flees for her life straight into the arms of a group of Saracens who leave her to die alone in the woods.  An honorable cavaliere named Nicolo comes to her rescue and offers to take her to the safety of Naples. 

As they journey together, they are irresistibly drawn to each other.  Believing Sara to be a nun, the honorable Nicolo is torn between love and duty to respect her vows.  Heartbroken, he does what honor demands and sets her free before she can tell him the truth that she is not a nun.  In her search to reunite with Nicolo, she encounters Umberto, a dark and dangerous man who will stop at nothing in his obsession to possess her.  With her sharp intellect, and her heart, Sara must rely on her own courage and strength to escape her abuser and find the only man she will ever love.

The Betrothal
(click on the image to go to the book's Amazon.com page)

Two young lovers bound by their love for each other. A dreadful overlord who will shatter lives to possess the woman he loves, and the dark secrets that one woman will risk everything to keep buried. An absorbing novel about wicked intentions, murder, obsessive love, undisclosed secrets, unstoppable destinies, and the woman whose secret will either destroy or restore lives.

The Betrothal is a retelling of the classic novel, The Betrothed (I Promessi Sposi) by Alessandro Manzoni. Inspired by this epic Italian classic novel; a new and captivating tale in a new setting, a new century, and with new plot twists while remaining faithful to key story elements.

The Pendant
(click on the image to go to the book's Amazon.com page)

A medieval tale about a lost ancient treasure. A 100 year family feud. And a woman with a passion richer than the bloodstone pendant she wears around her neck.

This Italian historical romance novel with a Gothic flare has it all - an ancient mystery, a bloodstone pendant with a secret, murder, vengeance, and a love story to take your breath away.  An historical Gothic romance of murder, desperation, and true love.

Italian Historical Box-Set
(click on the image to go to the book's Amazon.com page)

Please visit the author's website and blog, and her historical novel review site.

This review is by Candida Martinelli, of Candida Martinelli's Italophile Site, and the author of the cozy-murder-mystery novel AN EXTRA VIRGIN PRESSING MURDER, and the young-adult/adult mystery novel series THE VIOLET STRANGE MYSTERIES the first book of which is VIOLET'S PROBLEM.

The Politics of Washing by Polly Coles

Have you ever visited Venice, Italy, the most unique time-capsule city on the planet, after Pompeii?  Well, Pompeii has one advantage over Venice, for tourists:  all the Pompeians are dead.  In general, the average tourist in Venice encounters from Venetians rudeness, money-grubbing, cheating, insults, offensive stares, lies, and slams and feet-crushing in close quarters. 

Yes, millions of tourists come to Venice every year, but the millions of tourists support the economy of Venice, a city that is not practical for any other kind of modern commerce.  I find it impossible to feel any sympathy for the Venetian sense of self-pity and self-entitlement, and their delusional demands for subsidized plentiful jobs and cheap housing from a government in more debt than any other European government bar one.

The Politics of Washing, a memoirs of one year of living in Venice of an Anglo-Italian family, is by an author (the wife) who twists herself into impossible contortions to become an apologist for unforgivable Venetian bad behavior.  So many statements in the book begin "There is no excuse for this sort of behavior, but..."  There are many "buts" in the 200 page book.  And none of the "buts" are valid.  There REALLY IS NO EXCUSE for the Venetians' behavior.

Though I dislike the rudeness, I do understand...

The move of the couple, she English, he Italian, and their four children to Venice, seems ill-conceived from the start, and the family is quite ill-prepared for the reality of a city without cars, and life in another culture.  It is no secret that the "roads" of Venice are canals, and the taxis and cars are boats, and yet the author is surprised by this.  It is no secret that Italy has probably the worst-functioning government services in Europe, and yet the author seems surprised by this, too.

As with so much else in Italy, the situation is the opposite of what one might find in Britain.

It has long been a fact that Venice is the most tourist-visited city in the world, and yet the author seems surprised by the tourists.  There are other towns and cities in the world whose population swells to many multiples of the resident population during tourist season.  Those cities embrace their economic good-fortune, and seek to provide decent facilities for the in-comers, and make sure their visit is all they dream it will be.  Thus they ensure that their economic mainstay remains strong and produces repeat visits. 

Venetians, in contrast, shoot themselves and the tourists in the foot with their common price gouging and often disgraceful accommodations, along with the often disgraceful treatment of visitors.  The bellyaching, oddly, is repeated by the author, her having seemingly been fully brainwashed by the locals into becoming a petty, insulting, ignorant and very often naive temporary resident of Venice.  And her own bigotries about U.S. Americans shine through.

The author admits the locals' xenophobia, contrariness, rudeness, price-gouging, insults, capriciousness, slothfulness, etc. then adds that "but" to the sentence, apologizing away the Venetians' unforgivable sins.  In a rare moment of honestly, the author admits:

...the Venetian dream last only as long as you can keep it detached from reality, and most particularly, from the reality of modern Italy.

She even admits that many of the things that make Venice so difficult for residents, old and new, is the Italian workers' disgust for the ideas of good service and quality public service.  Then, that too is followed by a "but", explaining away the slothfulness of unfireable government workers by citing the country's only being a country for two centuries or so.

The most frustrating parts of the book are when the author repeats the delusional "wishes" that the locals profess to, claiming them also for her own:  subsidized housing for "locals", plentiful jobs and industries for "locals", tourism restricted by immigration-style number limits. 

Other delusions are all her own:  an education for "locals" so they are less xenophobic, and a campaign to help "locals" understand that immigrants who live in Venice are the "new Venetians" and the salvation of the city. 

Another delusion is this:

...invaded by millions of strangers with no real investment in the place.

The tourists who visit Venice often do so with the idea that their visit will provide the incomes needed to sustain beautiful, historical Venice for future generations.  They purchase the price-gouging clothes, purses, paper, and paintings; and they buy the over-priced trashy souvenirs that they know are made in China, not because they are beautiful, but because they hope the money the shop-keepers earn will keep Venice above water.

I wasn't going to review this book, which I received as a review-copy, because I don't enjoy writing negative reviews.  But the publisher sent an e-mail reminding me of my obligation to post a review, so I felt obligated to post this honest review.

From the book's description:

This is the story of ordinary life in an extraordinary place. The beautiful city of Venice has been a fantasy land for people from around the globe for centuries, but what is it like to live there? To move house by boat, to get a child with a broken leg to hospital or set off for school one morning only to find that the streets have become rivers and the playground is a lake full of sewage? When Polly Coles and her family left England for Venice, they discovered a city caught between modern and ancient life—where the locals still go on an annual pilgrimage to give thanks for the end of the Black Death; where schools are housed in renaissance palaces and your new washing machine can only be delivered on foot. This is a city perilously under siege from tourism, but its people refuse to give it up—indeed, they love it with a passion. The Politics of Washing is a fascinating window into the world of ordinary Venetians and the strange and unique place they call home.

The Politics of Washing is published by Robert Hale - London.

Here is a link to the book at Amazon.com:

This review is by Candida Martinelli, of Candida Martinelli's Italophile Site, and the author of the cozy-murder-mystery novel AN EXTRA VIRGIN PRESSING MURDER, and the young-adult/adult mystery novel series THE VIOLET STRANGE MYSTERIES the first book of which is VIOLET'S PROBLEM.

A Thousand Days in Venice by Marlena de Blasi

The subtitle of this book is An Unexpected Romance.  In this memoirs-autobiography-travelogue the author twists about her real-life experiences in a time-tripping, flowery-written account, to create the semblance of a fictional Venetian romance novel.  We get history, Italian culture, the problems of the immigrant, and lots of late-romance angst.

While reading A Thousand Days in Venice I found myself thinking about the humorist Mark Twain's observation that "Truth is stranger than fiction because fiction has to make sense."  Not much about the author's decision to pursue a relationship with her "stranger", as she calls him, makes sense.  Falling in love does not make sense.  It is temporary insanity.  So we should probably suspend our disbelief at the author's actions, and just accept the truth for what it is, which is a huge life gamble that may have paid off.

The truth is that a middle-aged woman leaves her home, her business, and her family and moves to Venice to be with a Venetian man who picked her up in a pretty creepy fashion, pursued her in an obsessive manner, and swept her off her feet with intensely romantic lines that too closely resemble lines from bad romance novels.  So, yes, truth is stranger than fiction!

This book was lucky to have been published before the Indie book boom.  If it had come any later, it would have been drowned out by the hundreds of other love-in-Italy memoirs, most with bad endings.  As it is, the book benefits from a big publisher's marketing clout and savvy.  Many people have author-signed copies of this books, and have seen the author on her book tours.  The book includes as back material an article by the author on how to enjoy Venice as a tourist, and lots of reading group questions and topics for discussion.

The author is a skilled writer.  She uses the present tense to keep the story immediate for the reader.  Her first person account shows her baroque character to perfection.  Her prose is baroque and poetic, sometimes to the point of incomprehension.  I suspect this was intentional.  The author wanted to minimize the criticism of her actions, and to protect innocents on the periphery of her story.  I respect this.

If I had to pinpoint the philosophical message of the book, it would have to be this:

Life is this conto, account...an unknown quantity of days from which one is permitted to withdraw only one precious one of them at a time.  No deposits accepted.

So... live your life like each day is your last.  Take chances.  Embrace true love.

The author is swept up by the "love of her life".  She finds it:

Astonishing what a man bearing tenderness can do to open a heart.

Her florid style adds much to the story:

Loving Fernando is like a single, sharp shake of the stones that lets me read all the patterns that once baffled and sometimes tortured me.

She is a romantic, and has written a book for romantics:

Too often it is we who won't let life be simple.

Is it any wonder readers love to quote from this book?!  I'm do not claim to be hugely romantic, just a bit romantic.  So some of the sentiments and situations left we feeling uncomfortable.  For example, when the fifty+, divorced author states:

...I am in love for the first time in my life.

I immediately felt sorry for every previous man who had shared her life!

I am more realist than romantic, so when I read memoirs by people living in Italy, knowing what I do about how difficult it is to make a living in Italy, I immediately suspect that the book I'm reading is the manner in which this person is hoping to finance their life in Italy.  That may have been the case for this author. 

The author writes this book seven years after the events, and three houses later than the one described in the book.  The couple now have a gastro-tour business in Italy, based in Orvieto, far from Venice (she is a chef).  The business no doubt benefits from her name-recognition from this and other books.   

Several books follow A Thousand Days in Venice:

• A Thousand Days in Tuscany: A Bittersweet Adventure
• That Summer in Sicily: A Love Story
• Antonia and her Daughters
• The Lady in the Palazzo

From the book's description:

Fernando first sees Marlena across the Piazza San Marco and falls in love from afar. When he sees her again in a Venice café a year later, he knows it is fate. He knows little English; she, a divorced American chef traveling through Italy, speaks only food-based Italian. Marlena thought she was done with romantic love, incapable of intimacy. Yet within months of their first meeting, she has quit her job, sold her house in St. Louis, kissed her two grown sons good-bye, and moved to Venice to marry “the stranger,” as she calls Fernando.

This deliciously satisfying memoir is filled with the foods and flavors of Italy and peppered with culinary observations and recipes. But the main course here is an enchanting true story about a woman who falls in love with both a man and a city, and finally finds the home she didn’t even know she was missing.

Have you never been to Venice?  Here is a two minute intro to her unique beauty:

A Thousand Days in Venice was published by Random House and Ballantine Books, but is now in reprint with another publisher.  You can finds lots of second-hand copies for sale, and the reprint offers the new book in several formats.

Here are direct links to the book, in the various formats, at Amazon.com:

Here are links to the author's other books relating to Italy, at Amazon.com:

This review is by Candida Martinelli, of Candida Martinelli's Italophile Site, and the author of the cozy-murder-mystery novel AN EXTRA VIRGIN PRESSING MURDER, and the young-adult/adult mystery novel series THE VIOLET STRANGE MYSTERIES the first book of which is VIOLET'S PROBLEM.

The Villa by Nora Roberts

The author of The Villa is a prolific and bestselling writer of romances for adults, with the books often tinged with suspense, mystery or fantasy.  She departs from her usual fare for the 2001 The Villa, which is promoted as a "sweeping saga" like the late Harold Robbins's books. 

Also a departure for the author is the book's length at 400+ pages, and the omniscient narrator who lets us see inside the minds of all the characters.  The narration style spoils the mystery since we see into the minds of all the sociopaths in the books, so the reader knows all along who the bad-guys are. 

The length allows for a whole "TV season" of plot twists to occur, and to give the reader lots of escapist entertainment for their buck (actually, the mass market paperbacks are available for 1 cent second-hand!).

The Villa is clearly a bid for a TV mini-series.  Actually, it resembles the storyline of an entire season of the TV series Falcon Crest, the night-time soap that followed the crimes, seductions and business of Napa Valley, California, vintners, headed by a hard-ass matriarch, and surrounded by a beautiful supporting cast.

The Villa explores the story of the crimes, seductions and business of a Napa Valley, California, vintners, headed by a hard-ass Italian matriarch, surrounded by a beautiful supporting cast of wine-loving Americans and Italian-Americans. 

 

The author's trademark romance (with euphemistically explicit sex scenes) takes center stage, with the family dramas coming in at a close second, but like so many soap-operas there are few relatable or likeable characters. 

Modern-day archetypes abound, which is probably a good things, since there are so many characters, the use of archetypes helped me keep all the characters straight in my mind:  the gold-digger, the matriarch, the butch guy ("the caveman temporarily civilized"), the hard business woman, the defeated woman, the dirty-mouthed woman, the rebellious teen, the thwarted business rival, the philandering husband...

Another trademark of the author is her short paragraphs, most only one sentence long.  Then there is her replacement of all semi-colons and colons with periods, creating a book full of sentence fragments.  Most annoying for me was her use of commas in place of the conjunction "and":

He turned her, slapped the tool in her hands.

The story moves between Venice, Italy, and Napa Valley, California, between the Giambelli family's wineries.  Three generations of strong women enjoy lots of sex and adventure throughout the book.  Italian words dots the text, some used correctly, some not.  The characters' names are an odd mix of Italian and Spanish (Tereza, Pilar, Cezare). 

Reading so many books for this site has shown me that these sorts of errors are very common.  But The Villa has an unforgivable error in Italian that sent my blood pressure upward each time I encountered it:  the direct address of the matriarch with the article!

Of course, La Signora. 

Instead of the correct:

Of course, Signora.

There are two serious icky bits that run through The Villa that I have to mention, since they ruined the major romantic story for me.  The Tyler MacMillan-Sophia Giambelli romance, one of those overused fight-until-they-have-sex-then-they-are-passionately-in-love plotlines, is between two people who grew up together as siblings!  No, they don't share the same blood.  But, yes, they were brought up since childhood as siblings.  I'm cringing even as I write this!

Here is a sample of the author's classic man-woman interplay:

"Don't worry, MacMillan, you're not my type."  Big, rough, elemental.  "Usually."

"You're not mine."  Sharp, slick, dangerous.  "Ever."

The second icky bit is Tyler MacMillan's relationship with a fourteen-year-old girl.  I'll leave that as is, because just his having a relationship with a fourteen-year-old girl is enough icky-ness in itself.

The awkward parts don't stop with the above.  I was stopped short when I read:

...her system shivered at the scrape of his teeth on her throat.

All I could think when I read that was that it was physically impossible unless I had mistakenly picked up a paranormal book, and the man's teeth could somehow reach down into the woman's throat and scrape it, like a strep-throat-examiner. 

Okay, throat can be used to denote the very front part of the neck, but it really is better for a writer to use neck when they mean the outside (i.e. necklace around her neck), and to use throat when they mean the inside (i.e. sore throat, deep throat).

I thought the sex scenes were awkwardly written.  The euphemisms the author uses while trying to avoid the medical terms for the sex parts, which seems to be taboo in her novels, were at times laughable, and at other times repulsive.  For example, at one point, Sophia is described so, when in a clinch with Tyler:

...her hips pistoned.

I'm not even sure that is a verb, but it transported me out of the lovers' bedroom to inside a V8 engine, which I don't find remotely romantic.  I'm not sure why the author bothered with the euphemisms, actually, when she peppered the text with many, many f-word vulgarities.

The ending is contrived and seemingly inspired by The Long Hot Summer, a 1958 Paul Newman film based on William Faulkner stories:  a raging fire, women being strong and loving and forgiving, men being less so.  Some Amazon reviewers deemed the ending amoral.  I found the whole romance between Tyler and Sophia icky-ly amoral, and Tyler's relationship with the teenaged girl amoral, and ... oh, well, so much more, but the so-much-more was intended to be amoral, and the main romantic storyline was not intended to be.  I believe the author erred seriously with that bit.   

From the book's description:

PR executive Sophia Giambelli loves her job and has never worried about competition.  For three generations, her family’s wines have been world-renowned for their quality.  But things are about to change at Villa Giambelli.

Tereza, the matriarch, has announced a merger with the MacMillan family’s winery—and Sophia will be assuming a new role.  As a savvy businesswoman, she knows she must be prepared for anything…but she isn’t prepared for Tyler MacMillan.

They’ve been ordered to work together very closely, to facilitate the merger.  Sophia must teach Ty the finer points of marketing—and Ty, in turn, shows her how to get down and dirty, to use the sun, rain, and earth to coax the sweetest grapes from the vineyard.

As they toil together, both in and out of the fields, Sophia is torn between a powerful attraction and a professional rivalry.  At the end of the season, the course of the company’s future—and the legacy of the villa—may take an entirely new direction.  And when acts of sabotage threaten both the family business and the family itself, Sophia’s quest will be not only for dominance, but also for survival.

Here are direct links to the book at Amazon.com, where you can find .01 cent copies of the mass market paperback from 3rd party sellers, and a new paperback edition, a Kindle e-book, and an audio book:

Here is an interview with the author Nora Roberts by Borders Books:

 

Please visit the author's website and Facebook page.

This review is by Candida Martinelli, of Candida Martinelli's Italophile Site, and the author of the cozy-murder-mystery novel AN EXTRA VIRGIN PRESSING MURDER, and the young-adult/adult mystery novel series THE VIOLET STRANGE MYSTERIES the first book of which is VIOLET'S PROBLEM.