Absorbing political machinations and sexual tension collide to hook readers.
A historical fable of Venetian politics becomes a queer bildungsroman in this debut romance and series launch.
In the lush world of 14th-century Venice, Niccolò “Nico” Saltano is little more than a young peasant. That is, until the Venetian leadership fatefully plucks the 14-year-old from his place in life to serve as the “ballot boy”—an attendant of sorts to the new doge and also the person in charge of counting the ballots in the doge’s election. One doge dies and another must take office, ushering Nico into the Doge’s Palace and his new life in the Venetian court, waiting to count ballots for the latest Venetian ruler. Unwilling to show up for the final tally, Andrea Contarini is the ultimate reluctant victor to be elected as new doge, and he and Nico form an unlikely bond and alliance as members of the palace brought against their will. The court politics and political intrigue are interesting, but they’re often relegated to the background as other, even more interesting, drama unfolds outside the palace walls. Behind the Venetian rules and niceties is a society that is cruel and homophobic—being gay is a capital offense. The heart of the novel is a coming-of-age story in period dress that follows Nico’s coming to terms with his own sexuality—and the danger that it may bring him. Mellman’s tale shines when it interrogates the ways sex and gender impact the lives of ordinary people, as when the cast reflects on the public execution of a “sodomite” or when, in the very beginning of the book, a character named Alex reveals that she regularly wears male drag. Alex is one of the book’s most compelling characters—a figure from Nico’s past life in the streets of Venice whose class position and tendency to act like a “beggar boy” get her into trouble. If any fault could be had with the novel, it’s that Mellman leaves Alex’s fate ambiguous. Of course, readers will just have to come back for more.
Absorbing political machinations and sexual tension collide to hook readers.Pub Date: Feb. 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64890-468-4
Page Count: 383
Publisher: NineStar Press
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
A surprisingly sensual sports romance.
A collegiate diver and swimmer secretly pursue kink together, and risk falling in love along the way.
Scarlett Vandermeer is struggling. Despite a successful recovery from the injury that almost ended her Stanford diving career, she hasn’t been able to get her head together, and it’s affecting her performance. Plus, she’s trying to stay focused on getting into medical school. A relationship would be out of the question. By comparison, Lukas Blomqvist is a swimming idol, a record-breaker who wins medals as easily as breathing, and Scarlett has long been convinced he would never look in her direction—until one fateful night when a mutual friend lets slip that they have something unexpected in common: Scarlett likes to be submissive in the bedroom, while Lukas prefers to take a dominant approach. Now, they both know a big secret about each other, and it’s something neither of them can stop thinking about. It’s Lukas who suggests they have a fling—purely physical, just to take the edge off, so Scarlett can get out of her own head and stop overthinking her dives. Initially, their arrangement is easy to stick to, but the more time they spend together, the more Scarlett starts to realize that what she feels for Lukas is more than physical attraction. Complicating the situation is the fact that Scarlett’s friend Penelope Ross used to go out with Lukas, and the longer Scarlett keeps mum about her true feelings for him, the more difficult it is to keep the situation hidden from another person she really cares about. While Scarlett and Lukas’ relationship does begin as a physical one, their deeper psychological connection takes a little too long to emerge amid all the other storylines, resulting in a somewhat rushed resolution. However, Hazelwood’s latest is proof of the depth and maturity that has emerged in her writing over the years, and it highlights her embrace of sexier, more emotional elements than were present in her original STEMinist rom-coms.
A surprisingly sensual sports romance.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593641057
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2025
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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