Wat zijn de boeken van Santa Montefiore toch heerlijk om te lezen als je zin heb een romantisch boek. Op mijn leesclub noemen we dit ZZZ-boeken. (Zwoele, Zomer, Zwijmel boeken). En aangezien het weer hier uitermate geschikt is om s' avonds nog lang buiten te zitten was dit het perfecte boek. Romantische ontwikkelingen, wat spoken, een oud landgoed in Italië en een famile met veel geheimen. ( )

This was an odd book. some parts of it I loved, other parts were just awful - schmaltzy, naff , unreasonable, completely unecessary. it left me with the feeling she;d written a book, the had to add about a third of the material to pad it out to long enough.
One one level, it's a love story of our age - recently divorced man has played the field, settled down, had 2 children, and then got divorced. Looks up an old flame, throws her and her marriage into turmoil before heading out of town to find some space. Finds space, gets his head in gear and finds love at the same time. So far so good. Ok, so he;s not exaclt an everyman, being a high powered banker with pots of dosh in the bank and his hidey hole happens to be a palace on the Amalfi coast that his parents have bought and restored. And had it been left there, the book would have been a third shorter and just fine. but no. we then get side avenues, of his mother's guests, her obsession with the Sunday times comming to do an article, the intruder lurking around the folly, ghosts etc etc etc. There were, i felt, too many strands, but instead of making rope, it made a tangled mess. At times I quite enjoyed it, at times I wanted to ask the author what she was playing at. it felt to me like a bit of a mess - rather like one of my attempts to follow a recipe when you're missing a major ingredient and need to make it stretch to 6 not 4. All the parts were there, but it didn't seem to make a satisfying whole. Maybe this was exacerbated by listening to it, where it's not as easy to flip back 2 pages and make sure you've got the hang of it. I particularly didn't like the whole psychic interludes, that really felt a bit manipulative - but I'm sure some people will have had their heart strings twanged. But the best I can do is meh. ( )

een italiaans liefdesgeschiedenis