Her antics often had me laughing out loud at times, especially when it wasn’t at first clear what she was up to and her devious schemes were gradually revealed. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. A few passages coil toward melodrama, and one inelegant line after a rape seems jarringly modern, but the spell holds fast. I thought I was going to love this book, with its laudatory blurbs by Elin Hildebrand, Beatriz Williams, and Lucinda Riley on the back cover. Thank you to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for the opportunity to read and review this book.

The crowds of summer and autumn have gone, the air has a new freshness, the light has that pale-gold quality unique to this time of year. As a first-time thriller author, Lucy found the trickiest part of writing her novel; The Hunting Party is getting to know what to reveal on the one hand and what to keep truly hidden on the other hand and also knowing the amount to reveal at a given time. And post WWII Europe is a place that allows for endless stories, recoving from the war, social mobility, women's rights, voting rights, technological advancement etc.It had been replaced with an agony aunt column: ‘ Gina Risponde…’ Roman housewives writing in to ask how to get their whites whiter, lonely men asking how to conceal a balding pate, young women eager to work in the capital asking whether it was really the immoral, dangerous place their parents spoke of. Overall, a deeply personal book that worked superbly for me and the only thing I would add is to give it a try and see if it works for you too. At 5 percent in, our hero has fallen in love at first sight with a mysterious damaged goddess who peels an orange in a single strip. If you are looking for a holiday from the comfort of your own home this summer, then I can highly recommend this book! He rescued a beautiful, mysterious, and badly bruised woman from the sea only to become obsessed with her.

Of all the luminaries aboard -- an Italian ingénue, an American star, a reclusive director -- only one holds Hal in Stella. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. g., "It reminded him of that one traumatic afternoon he spent at the sea with his father, a point that is hugely important to the story that's unfolding, but he didn't want to think about that now, tra la la"). In fact, many of the characters lacked depth with only Stella being given flashbacks (interesting why only her past was deemed necessary).And soon, Kate learns about the dark past and comes to discover a profoundly romantic story spanning for decades. Ugh, here we have a relationship based not on two people talking and getting to know each other but on (for the man) simply looking at the woman and liking how she makes him feel, and (for the woman) a human connection that is mostly a distraction/escape, whether temporary or permanent, from her sad reality. I really didn't hate this, I just wanted it to have higher standards for itself (and for its readers), I guess. The Mediterranean setting is wonderful and the ambience is stunning; Lucy Foley has an exquisite talent for elegant and immersive descriptive writing. Torches have been lit in brackets about the entrance, and Hal can see several gleaming motor cars circling like carp, disclosing guests in their evening finery.

It's an interesting story, an interesting and appalling story about war, how it affects relationships, families and hope, but I really did not understand the necessity of the old captains story and how come everyone on the yacht treated Hal, the journalist, as their confessor, and they all told him about their personal secrets and tragedy. Sometimes, historical fiction can go a bit over people’s heads (mine included), but I felt this book made no unfamiliar references.The melodrama weakens the story (real people don't talk and act and think like this), and the uneven, often sloppy writing weakens it further. Hal winds up having a rejuvenating one-night stand with a mystery woman named Stella, but she slips away without telling him her last name. They might be a different species altogether from the black-clad matrons glimpsed in Trastevere hanging out their washing, heading to church, looking exactly as they might have done in centuries past. One man turns to give him a terrible stare, and Hal is so bemused by the impression of something like hatred, that he takes a step back. She then worked for several years as a fiction editor in the publishing industry – during which time she also wrote her debut, The Book of Lost and Found.