Reviewed by Emma Crowley
Manhattan, 1953. Francesca feels smothered by lace as she tries on wedding dresses in an uptown boutique. Can she really start a new life with her fiancé without first answering the questions she has about her childhood in Italy? Confronted with the news that the bougainvillea-covered villa she grew up in is for sale, and the lavish gardens her father designed and cultivated are destined to be razed, she buys a plane ticket and doesn’t look back. She can’t stand by and watch it all turn to rubble.
Fran chokes back a sob as she finds the gardens wild and overgrown and the once-pristine follies crumbling under the baking sun. But the lingering scent of the Italian basil from the kitchen garden brings Fran closer to the father she lost. To save this sacred space she must uncover what really happened when Vivi disappeared.
But while standoffish locals treat Fran like an outsider, she knows she is closing in on a secret at the very heart of the gardens she ran barefoot through as a young girl; a tragic love triangle that plagued the villa, defied the authorities, and might change everything Fran thinks she knows about who she is. One thing is certain: what happened to Vivi was no accident.
And just when Fran thinks she’s uncovered a truth that will shake the little village of Cortona to its foundations, she discovers a letter that changes everything once again. Can Fran find a way to save the gardens before they are destroyed? Or will she be forced to return home to a future in New York that no longer fits?
Many thanks to Bookouture via NetGalley for my copy of The Tuscan Villa to review and to Sharon for having my review on the blog.
The Tuscan Villa is the third book in Ella Carey’s Daughters of Italy series. It can easily be read as a stand-alone story as I felt there was the merest of hints as to the content of the previous books that a reader would only have spotted if they had already engaged with this series. Again as with the first two books the setting is stunning which is enhanced through vibrant, realistic and descriptive imagery which makes you feel has if you have been transported to the heart of Tuscany. Images of the countryside, vineyards, hills, olive groves, farmhouses and villas filled the pages not to mention the wonderful garden that our main character Vivi curates with her gardener Emilio at Villa Aria. Characters from before do reappear alongside those that are new and it was great to make connections and fill in gaps from previous books.
In the late 1930’s Lucia is the cook at Villa Aria in Tuscany for Vivi, an American who has settled in the area. Lucia originally came from Sicily and a difficult family background. She wishes to be more than a cook. She would rather the life that Vivi and Countess Evelina, who resides at Villa Rosa, have and she has her eyes set on Nico, the disgraced son of the Countess. I felt Lucia was aiming way above her station and the chapters from her viewpoint had her fixating on Nico who himself seemed to be more concerned as the book progressed with getting back into his mothers good books. But once you engage with and back up the ideas of the Germans during the war there is no coming back from it considering all the tragedy, heartbreak and destruction that unfolds in the Tuscan valley. I couldn’t quite understand what Lucia was getting such a prominent role throughout the earlier chapters of the book but as the story develops things became clearer. She was a strand of a much bigger story at play and all the dots do begin to join together.
Vivi was the character I enjoyed reading about the most and in fact I would have loved even more chapters from her point of view. In 1936, she ends her engagement in New York and makes the bold and brave decision to return to Italy where she had spent a period of time when she was 21. This was a time where she truly found herself and she has thought about it ever since. Her time in Venice changed her and ever since she had returned it was all she could think about. Travelling back to Italy she learns that the Villa Aria is for sale and instantly she falls in love with it and a purchase is made. It becomes a centre for artists, poets and a place of rest and retreat. Vivi is in her element and creates a garden alongside Emilio that becomes renowned and has significance throughout the book. We see how Vivi and Lucia operated during the war and dealt with the daily struggles, but I always felt like there was something niggling away at her. Things left unsaid or that the reader should have known. She became an enigma /conundrum and even more so when she disappeared at the tale end of the war.
Tying the three timelines together was Francesca (Fran) in 1953. Fran had been secreted out of Tuscany at the start of the war for her own safety. Her father Emilio and her postmistress mother Giulietta wanted the best for her and so Vivi’s mother took care of her in New York. Now being pressured to marry which she doesn’t feel ready for she is distraught to see a magazine article detailing that Matteo a sculptor has bought the Villa Aria and plans to change the gardens and the structure of the house. With both her parents dead and Vivi disappeared for the last 8 years Fran can’t let the villa which consumed so much of her past life and meant so much to her go without a fight. It embodies who she really was and the past life which was glorious and magical. Until she sorts out the past she can’t move on with her future. There are huge losses in the past which she needs to reconcile with first and foremost being the disappearance of Vivi. Again I felt more could have been explored with Francesca. I found that she arrived in Tuscany confronted Matteo and all of a sudden on first meeting serious feelings seemed to develop out of nowhere when she didn’t know him at all. Things were spoken about and glossed over very quickly regarding Matteo and his plans for the villa. She doesn’t want the past destroyed but has to try and come to some sort of compromise with Matteo. It was only in the later chapters that I felt Fran really put on her investigative hat and dug deeper and alongside her I was eager to uncover the truth. At times though things did just conveniently seem to happen.
I wouldn’t be truthful if I didn’t mention the issues that bothered me throughout my reading of the book as I have seen it mentioned in some other reviews also. There is a good, decent plot here with a mystery to be solved at its centre but quite simply the chapters were way too short and the timeline jumped around all over the place. I found I was only settling into the rhythm of a chapter familiarising myself with the characters and what was going on and then boom it was onto another chapter and a different timeline. It was a case of constantly being jolted and it never allowed for anything significant or truly deep and meaningful to occur. For sure, the chapters needed to be longer and more in depth. I felt the same with regard to the timeline. There were three different timelines running alongside one another and I never with a turn of the page which timeline I was going to get and which and what character. Yes they were mentioned at the start of the chapter but it wasn’t like they went late 1930’s, 1945 and then 1953 and then repeated. It was a mish mash and made things confusing for me and therefore resulted in me taking quite some time to become familiar with everything and to work out where the story was going. It was only in the last quarter or so (and even at that the book ended at 84%) that I found myself deeply invested in the outcome and things really became very interesting.
All this makes it sound like I didn’t like the book which is far from the truth but I just felt there was so much potential here and if the chapters were made longer and the jumping around of timelines didn’t occur so often the book would have been all the better for it.I love books set in and around World War Two and elements of the previous books came back to me as I read through this one which did make it enjoyable. The mystery of Vivi’s disappearance and the reasons for it will keep readers captivated. I was kicking myself that I hadn’t guessed the circumstances as there had been subtle hints that I hadn’t picked up on. The last few chapters had me in their thrall despite the abrupt ending but the series has been brought full circle and I am sad to say goodbye to Countess Evelina and those that surrounded her.
No comments:
Post a Comment