Atmospheric and Intriguing

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This book was a bit of a slow starter for me, but I only say this to urge anyone who feels the same to keep reading! It’s not as light a read as the cover leads you to believe, but once I got into it something clicked and I couldn’t put it down. It’s rather heavy on descriptions of Rome (a dusty, scorching, stunning place) and it’s religious and political history, and I found myself having to reread pages to take everything in, but the characters had me gripped. Almost immediately we realise that everyone has a secret, something past or present that they’re trying to conceal, and I was constantly trying to put the pieces together along with Lottie to figure out what not only what actually happened to Nina all those years ago, but what her new friends and colleagues were keeping from her in the present. As expected Rome is a character in itself, majestic on the surface with a dark underbelly, and you can feel the tension rising as the city hurtles towards a stifling summer of revelations.

This is my first Elizabeth Buchan novel but it certainly won’t be my last!