Good escape reading in this tale of love and tough decisions in Venice.
In Nardin’s romance, a young woman’s life radically changes when she decides to leave America for Venice and a handsome gondolier.
Victoria Greco, 30, leads a busy life as executive assistant to a high-powered Hollywood talent agent and hopes to break into agenting herself. On a rare vacation, Victoria visits Venice, Italy, where a muscular, golden-haired young man named Alvise Moro serves as her gondolier. Although he has a degree in Italian literature, Alvise comes from four generations of gondoliers, and there’s no job he’d rather do. They’re immediately and mutually attracted; though Victoria is usually cautious, she tells herself “I’m on vacation. Why not enjoy a little romance?” Though Victoria doesn’t consider Alvise her dream guy (“The man she’d marry would have to be a successful business man to compliment [sic] her own desired success”), she misses him terribly in California. Before long, one door opens as another closes. Alvise visits and proposes to Victoria just as her boss gives the bad news: no promotion this year. Marrying a man she barely knows, moving to Venice, and giving up her career might not make sense, but “there was no negotiating with the heart.” Naturally, nothing is as easy as Victoria had hoped, and she must tackle several obstacles on the way to giving her heart what it wants. In her well-researched debut novel, Nardin does a fine job evoking Venice’s atmosphere, culture, and history. The particular practices and customs of gondoliering, along with women’s efforts to enter the profession, make for absorbing reading. Victoria’s new job—selling high-end jewelry—is also enjoyably luxurious. Given the highly romanticized love affair, the book benefits from its grounding in realistic conflicts that arise from Victoria’s situation, whether it’s the constant secondhand smoke in Europe, a critical Italian mother-in-law, or dealing with international law. Even so, it’s more than a little hard to accept that an ambitious career woman who’s always valued material success would so suddenly and completely change her plans, giving up a great deal of personal autonomy, privacy, and power.
Good escape reading in this tale of love and tough decisions in Venice.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 979-1-2200259-0-4
Page Count: 422
Publisher: Waterline Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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