I came across this book while trying to find something similar to Dan Brown’s writings (I know… Robert Langdon’s a chump with next to no character flaws, but I still can’t get enough of Brown’s books. They’re page turners.) I was torn between which book to purchase, but this was the first by Phillips and I am usually a sucker for reading an author’s first work. I paid my $15 (plus my B&N discount, of course) and rushed it home to sit on a dusty, overcrowded bookshelf for a month.
I have a silly little confession. Although I have a wide vocabulary, somewhere between junior high and now, I missed some vitally important vocabulary words. Please, PLEASE stress to your students/children/friends how beneficial paying attention in English class can be. That being said, I had no idea what a courtesan was while reading the back of this novel. Honestly, I thought, “Well, ‘courtesan’ kind of looks like ‘courtier’ and ‘courtiers’ were nobility in Ever After featuring Drew Barrymore, so this book must be about royalty in Renaissance Europe.” Boy, was I wrong. A “courtesan”, for those of you who are as clueless as I was, is a fancy prostitute. Think Julia Roberts AFTER Richard Gere bought her lots of nice things. As aforementioned, sexy romance pages are not my cup of tea. I read the entire novel and I must say it was not nearly as terrible as it could have been.
Alessandra is a young woman living in Italy of the early 1600s. A COURTESAN, she lives in luxury, enjoying the gifts of her many suitors. With her status comes fame, so much fame, in fact, she catches the eye of a few politicians. Adding them to her repertoire, she becomes privy to intelligence that could lead to the destruction of her entire city, Venice. Given her high moral code (tee hee) she feels the obligation of informing authorities weigh down on her shoulders. Ultimately, she does the right thing and shares her knowledge with the authorities only to have her closest friends and true love murdered as punishment for her betrayal.
Fast forward to current day Italy and find Claire, a green historian desperately trying to gather details of Alessandra’s life for her dissertation, and Gwen, Claire’s boss’ slightly promiscuous 15 year old daughter, as they encounter the streets of Venice together. My favorite portion of the story, the current segment, chronicles Claire’s furious competition to write the first (and best) story of what happened to Alessandra against Andrew, a seasoned historian and Cambridge prig who serves mostly to irritate Claire. After a few adventures and romances of their own, Gwen and Claire come to respect each other, something entirely lacking at the start of their Venice trip.
This book was just okay. I did not love it nor did I absolutely despise it. I feel the novel just was not a great fit for what I look for in a story. I would not recommend this title for young readers… or adolescent readers… or anyone offended by prostitutes, because there is a level of detail in two specific portions of the novel that I would not deem appropriate for my children to read, if I had children. Phillips’ second book looked interesting, but if the first book is any indication of what’s to come (which it usually is) I think I will skip it.
-Harper
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