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Those yearning for some Tuscan sunshine (or if you’re in the UK, any sunshine) – pay attention! Because I’m thrilled to be hosting today’s stop on the blog tour for Waking Isabella by Melissa Muldoon, and to talk about this engaging novel set in Italy.

You can watch the book trailer here.

Visit the tour page to see all the other great bloggers on the tour and for links to their reviews of Waking Isabella and interviews with Melissa. You can also enter the giveaway (scroll right down to the bottom of the page) for a chance to win a copy of Waking Isabella or an Amazon giftcard.

About the Book

While filming a documentary about Isabella de’ Medici – the Renaissance princess who was murdered by her husband – Nora begins to connect with the lives of two remarkable women from the past. Unravelling the stories of Isabella, the daughter of a fifteenth-century Tuscan duke, and Margherita, a young girl trying to survive the war in Nazi-occupied Italy, Nora begins to question the choices that have shaped her own life up to this point. As she does, hidden beauty is awakened deep inside of her, and she discovers the keys to her creativity and happiness. It is a story of love and deceit, forgeries and masterpieces – all held together by the allure and intrigue of a beautiful Tuscan ghost.

Format: ebook, paperback, hardcover (250 pp.) Publisher: Matta Press
Published: 11^th December 2017 Genre: Adult Fiction

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk ǀ Amazon.com ǀ Barnes and Noble ǀ Kobo
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find Waking Isabella on Goodreads

My Review

‘When Isabella woke that morning with intentions of washing her long dark hair, she hadn’t imagined she would be dead before it was dry.’

This arresting opening sentence is the starting point of a journey that will take the reader from 16^th century Florence to the Tuscan town of Arezzo in the Second World War and in the present day. There are sections told from the point of view of Isabella (briefly), Margherita (in wartime Arezzo) but largely from Nora in the present day. I found these different viewpoints worked better than the occasions where Nora ‘imagines’ or ‘visualizes’ scenes from the past, complete with dialogue.

Following her marriage break-up and other disappointments, Nora is disillusioned, unfulfilled and wondering about how things might have been had her life followed a different course – the road not taken, if you like. Fate intervenes when old friend, Juliette, contacts her. The opportunity to travel to Italy to make a documentary about the 16^th century Medici princess, Isabella, offers Nora the chance to revisit pleasant memories, renew friendships and recapture the adventurous spirit of her youth. ‘Just seeing Juliette’s name reminded her of a time when she had used another language and had been unafraid to make a choice, travel the world, and take chances.’

Once arrived in Italy, as Nora visits the locations connected with Isabella, she begins to feel ‘as though she had tapped into Isabella’s persona’. Nora channels the independence of spirit and determination she associates with the Medici princess to reassess her own life and aspirations up to that point. In due course, Nora’s stay in Arezzo awakes all sorts of other emotions as well and it’s fair to say it isn’t only the charming town that begins to tug at her heart strings.

The author’s passion for Italy and the Italian language is clearly evident in the novel. I liked the way that the writing style was subtly different for each of the three timelines. A minor quibble was that, although the reader understands Nora and those she meets are speaking Italian, frequently the dialogue contains a phrase in Italian, followed by the same phrase translated into English and then continues in English. This device gives the dialogue a lively flavour and a taste of Italian idioms but I found it repetitive after a while.

Aside from the few minor quibbles mentioned above, I really enjoyed Waking Isabella. I liked the idea it explored that events in the past have echoes in the modern day. As Nora muses, ‘People’s lives, energy, and actions had resounding effects flowing down through the years, touching, inspiring and sparking change.’ Waking Isabella is an engaging story of secrets, passion, loss, courage, betrayal and finding beauty in everything around you whether that’s art, friendship, food, wine, architecture, culture…or handsome jousters. It will appeal to those with an interest in Italy, art and who like the idea of awakening a little romance in their own lives.

I received a review copy courtesy of the author and Italy Book Tours in return for an honest and unbiased review.

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In three words: Engaging, romantic, uplifting

Try something similar…The Renaissance Club by Rachel Dacus (click here for my review)

About the Author

Melissa Muldoon is the Studentessa Matta—the crazy linguist! In Italian, “matta” means “crazy” or “impassioned.” Melissa has a B.A. in fine arts, art history and European history from Knox College, a liberal arts college in Galesburg, Illinois, as well as a master’s degree in art history from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. She has also studied painting and art history in Florence.

Melissa promotes the study of Italian language and culture through her dual-language blog, Studentessa Matta (studentessamatta.com). Melissa began the Matta blog to improve her command of the language and to connect with other language learners. It has since grown to include a podcast, “Tutti Matti per l’Italiano,” and the Studentessa Matta YouTube channel. Melissa also created Matta Italian Language Immersion Tours, which she co-leads with Italian partners in Italy.

Waking Isabella is Melissa’s second novel and follows Dreaming Sophia, published in 2016. In this new novel about Italy, the reader is taken on another art history adventure, inspired by Melissa’s experiences living and travelling in Italy, specifically Arezzo, as well as her familiarity with the language and art.

As a student, Melissa lived in Florence with an Italian family. She studied art history and painting and took beginner Italian classes. When she returned home, she threw away her Italian dictionary, assuming she’d never need it again, but after launching a successful design career and starting a family, she realized something was missing in her life. That “thing” was the connection she had made with Italy and the friends who live there. Living in Florence was indeed a life-changing event. Wanting to reconnect with Italy, she decided to start learning the language again from scratch. As if indeed possessed by an Italian muse, she bought a new Italian dictionary and began her journey to fluency—a path that has led her back to Italy many times and enriched her life in countless ways. Now, many dictionaries and grammar books later, she dedicates her time to promoting Italian language studies, further travels in Italy, and sharing her stories and insights about Italy with others. When Melissa is not travelling in Italy, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Melissa designed and illustrated the cover art for Waking Isabella and Dreaming Sophia. She also curates the Dreaming Sophia blog and Pinterest site: The Art of Loving Italy.

Connect with Melissa

Website ǀ Facebook ǀ Twitter ǀ Pinterest ǀ Instagram ǀ YouTube ǀ Goodreads

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toptentuesday

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl.

The rules are simple:

Each Tuesday, Jana assigns a new topic. Create your own Top Ten list that fits that topic – putting your unique spin on it if you want.
Everyone is welcome to join but please link back to The Artsy Reader Girl in your own Top Ten Tuesday post.
Add your name to the Linky widget on that day’s post so that everyone can check out other bloggers’ lists.
Or if you don’t have a blog, just post your answers as a comment.

This week’s topic is Favourite Book Quotes. One of my projects this year is reading/re-reading the books of John Buchan (click here to find out more about my Buchan of the Month reading project). Therefore, my quotations all come from books written by John Buchan. I chose them because they’re either great lines and/or quintessentially Buchan in style.

‘You think that a wall as solid at the earth separates civilisation from barbarism. I tell you the division is a thread, a sheet of glass.’ (Lumley to Leithen in The Power-House by John Buchan)

‘I returned from the City about three o’clock on that May afternoon pretty well disgusted with life.’ (Opening line of The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan)

‘It struck me that Albania was the sort of place that might keep a man from yawning.’ (The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan)

“I got the first hint on an inn on the Achensee in Tyrol. That set me inquiring, and I collected my other clues in a fur shop in the Galician quarter of Buda, in a Strangers’ Club in Vienna, and in a little bookshop off the Racknizstrasse in Leipsic.” (Scudder to Hannay in The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan)

“By God!’ he whispered, drawing his breath in sharply. “It is all pure Rider Haggard and Conan Doyle.” (‘The Literary Innkeeper’ in response to Hannay’s story, in The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan)

‘I stared after her as she walked across the lawn, and I remember noticing that she moved with the free grace of an athletic boy.’ (Hannay’s first glimpse of Mary in Mr Standfast by John Buchan)

‘So he passed over, and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.’ (Quotation from John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress in Mr Standfast by John Buchan)

‘He had never been lonely in his life before he met her, having at the worst found good company in himself; but now he longed for a companion, and out of all the many millions of the earth’s inhabitants there was only one that he wanted.’ (Jaikie about Alison in The House of the Four Winds by John Buchan)

‘It is to the credit of mankind that it responds to what is best in itself, when that best – which rarely happens – is so pinnacled that none can miss it.’ (Memory-Hold-The-Door by John Buchan)

‘It is a stage which no doubt has its drawbacks. The wind is not so good, the limbs are not so tireless as in the ascent; the stride is shortened, and since we are descending we must be careful in placing the feet. But on the upward road the view was blocked by the slopes and there was no far prospect to be had except by looking backwards. Now the course if mercifully adapted to failing legs, we can rest and reflect since the summit has been passed, and there is a wide country before us, though the horizon is mist and shadow.’ (On middle age, in Memory-Hold-The-Door by John Buchan)