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I was so excited to #partner with @m_a_mclaughlinauthor & @katerockbooktours! Thank you for the gifted copy of this book in exchange for my honest review!
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It has been awhile since I have read a good historical fiction that I loved this much! What an amazing debut novel by M.A. McLaughlin.
This dual timeline is so beautifully written and as the book went on, I was so excited to get back to the other timeline to fill in the blanks! I felt as though I went back in time while reading this gem!
The book starts right off with a murder! Then flashes forward a couple of years to 1947 where we meet Marianne, a widow from Boston who is a costume curator. Her best friend, Rufina, asked her to come to Italy to help with a museum display with some Victorian Era dresses that were found in a trunk. The dresses were in different stages of repair and since this was Marianne’s passion, she was up for the task! While observing the dresses, a letter falls out and reveals that they belonged to no other than Christina Rossetti, a famous poet! Marianne couldn’t figure out why Christina would just leave them without looking back. There had to be a reason & she going to figure it out!
Next comes Christina’s side of the story which was truly tragically beautiful in itself. She goes on vacation with her family, never being out of England before to her father’s homeland of Italy. It was her father's dying wish for her to return a book that was stolen from the Bibliotecha Capitolare. Christina has a secret mission of her own with hopes of finding true love so she does not have to follow through with a loveless marriage awaiting her back in England.
Everything about this book was just lovely! The only thing that I would've like to see more detail in would be the relationship between Marianne & Alessandro. To me it seemed to progress quickly but wasn’t written that way. With several twists and turns, I was guessing “who did it” until the very end!
This is definitely a book that I would recommend to anyone who enjoys good historical fiction with some mystery and romance.