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Book Review – Daughters of Naples by Diana Giovinazzo @CrookedLaneBks #20BOS26

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About the Book

Front cover of Daughters of Naples by Diana Giovinazzo showing image of Naples coast line

Naples, 1940. The three Cozzolino sisters, Leta, Marcella, and Bianca, live together in their small home during Mussolini’s domination. Leta runs the De Rosa dress shop where she takes care of her mother-in-law while her husband is at war. Marcella is an apprentice to a midwife, bringing up the next generation of Italian soldiers, much to the pride of her boyfriend, who is inspired by Mussolini’s rule. But when their youngest sister, Bianca, decides to join the partigiani – the Italian resistance – after her childhood sweetheart is sent to war, familial tensions are brought to light.

The sisters are soon at odds, questioning where they stand in the war effort. When Leta’s old flame, Pasquale, asks if he can use the dress shop to send messages for the partigiani, she refuses. But when Naples is bombed, the sisters are forced to reevaluate their stances and how far they are willing to go for each other and their country.

With the threat of Nazism looming over the city after Mussolini is ousted, the Cozzolino sisters will have to confront what they are willing to sacrifice and their loyalties to each other and to their country. 

Format: Paperback (320 pages) Publisher: Crooked Lane Books
Publication date: 21st July 2026 Genre: Historical Fiction

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My Review

I’m always drawn to historical novels set in WW2 for the range of perspectives they provide on people’s experiences of the war and its aftermath. Daughters of Naples transports the reader to Naples at the beginning of the war when the most obvious influence on the daily lives of its residents is the conflict between opponents and supporters of Mussolini’s fascist regime.

For the three Cozzolino sisters the war further complicates their relationships with the men in their lives. Leta married Anto more out of a desire to provide stability for her and her sisters than out of passion. Now he’s away serving in the Italian army with no news of his whereabouts, or even whether he’s still alive. It’s no surprise that Leta feels conflicted when the man she rejected, Pasquale, returns on the scene, especially since he’s a member of the outlawed partigiani – the Italian resistance. Bianca’s childhood sweetheart Luca is also on active service in the Italian navy. She finds it impossible to simply wait out the war, instead she is fuelled by a desire to become involved in the resistance movement, regardless of the risk. Meanwhile Marcella’s relationship with Giovanni, a member of the squadristi, the fascist militia supportive of Mussolini who are on a relentless quest to hunt down and destroy the partigiani, reflects the fissures in Naples society.

I have visited Naples and can identify with the description of it as having a ‘gritty charm’. I enjoyed experiencing the city through the eyes of the sisters.

I suppose I should have known about the heavy bombardment of Naples by Allied forces later on in the war but I didn’t, nor how extensively damaged the city was, both its infastructure and its architectural gems. And, as the book reveals, the German occupation of Naples was brutal.

It’s not difficult to be captivated by the vicissitudes of the sisters’ emotional journeys, encompassing as they do loss and betrayal. What also fascinated me was the insights into social attitudes, particularly in Marcella’s storyline. I hadn’t appreciated the stigma associated with midwifery at this time, with midwives given the perjorative term ‘angel-makers’ because it was believed they helped women end unwanted pregnancies rather than enabling the large families the nation needed. (Mussolini regarded twelve children as the ideal number).

Daughters of Naples is the absorbing story of how war can test even the strongest bonds of sisterhood.

I received a digital review copy courtesy of Crooked Lane Books. Daughters of Naples is book 9 of my 20 Books of Summer.

In three words: Emotional, immersive, dramatic
Try something similar: Daughters of War by Diana Jefferies

About the Author

Diana Giovinazzo is the co-creator of Wine, Women and Words, a weekly literary podcast featuring interviews with authors over a glass of wine.

Diana lives in the Los Angeles area with her husband and menagerie. (Photo: Publisher website)

Connect with Diana
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Book Review – Throw Away the Key by Jason M. Hough @crookedlanebks #20BOS26

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About the Book

Lars Bergman is no ordinary janitor. He’s the CIA’s locksmith. 

Formerly part of the CIA’s infamous Surreptitious Entry Team, Lars is now responsible for every padlock, safe, and secure door across the CIA headquarters. He’s never met a lock he couldn’t pick…except one, which he tried and failed to open during a botched mission in Warsaw at the end of the Cold War. 

Cruising toward retirement, Lars’s life is upended when a senior CIA official dies and he’s called upon to open the safe in her office. Inside the safe is a clue only Lars would notice, left by someone he’d worked with in his heyday. As he investigates, Lars soon realizes that his failed Warsaw operation has come back to haunt him and perhaps give him another chance at picking the one lock that’s ever eluded him. 

What Lars doesn’t realize is that what the lock is protecting could have dire ramifications for the organization he has spent his whole adult life safekeeping.

Format: Paperback (320 pages) Publisher: Crooked Lane Books
Publication date: 14th July 2026 Genre: Thriller

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My Review

Cryptic clues – a photograph and a seemingly innocuous document – found in the safe of a deceased senior CIA officer whom Lars worked with many years before sets him on a trail that leads back to Warsaw, the location of a failed ‘off the books’ mission back in 1989. It’s a failure that’s stuck in his mind ever since because it involved one of the very few locks he was unable to pick and, worst of all, he left a trace of his attempt to do so.

Disguising his trip as a long overdue vacation, Lars sets out on a private mission to uncover the truth, weaving a trail across Europe aimed at covering his tracks so as not to attract the attention of his bosses. It means using the ‘tradecraft’ he learned while in the field all those years ago, such as how to spot covert surveillence. Along with his exceptional lockpicking skills, he has to use a good deal of ingenuity, constructing lockpicking tools out of virtually nothing, and his ‘sixth sense’ for when something’s not quite right.

There are some terrific set-pieces, including one in a Swiss bank that could have come out of a heist movie, and some narrow escapes. Lars is definitely a character you can’t help rooting for and I liked he was able to call in favours from people he’d helped over the years.

Eventually, the trail leads back to CIA headquarters and some dramatic scenes as a conspiracy years in the making is revealed. It’s here that Lars’ ingenuity really comes to the fore, proving that the weak points in any organisation’s security are usually at the back door and come with a High Vis jacket.

It’s clear the book is the result of extensive research, especially into locks and lockpicking. I’m not sure I could unpick a lock using the descriptions in the book but that’s my failing not the author’s. However I could bandy around terms such as ‘wiper tension bar’ and ‘shim’. And I now know there is such a thing as competitive lockpicking and that there’s an annual LockCon conference attended by lockpicking experts from across the world.

Throw Away the Key is a really entertaining, well-paced spy thriller. Think the love child of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Mission Impossible.

I received a digital advance reader copy courtesy of Crooked Lane Books. Throw Away the Key is book 8 of my 20 Books of Summer 2026.

In three words: Clever, compelling, pacy
Try something similar: The Scarlet Papers by Matthew Richardson

About the Author

Jason M. Hough (pronounced ‘Huff’) is the New York Times bestselling author of ten novels, including The Dire Earth Cycle, Instinct, and the near-future spy thriller Zero World, which Publisher’s Weekly said is “a thrilling action rampage that confirms Hough as an important new voice in genre fiction.”
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In a former life he was a 3D artist, animator, and game designer (Metal Fatigue, Aliens vs. Predator: Extinction, and many others). He has worked in the fields of high-performance cluster computing and mobile user interfaces, and is named as co-inventor on three patents related to mobile content and licensing.

He lives near Seattle, Washington with his family. When not writing, reading, or hanging out with his kids, he spends his time chasing espresso perfection (with mixed results), and taking long road trips in his electric car.

Connect with Jason
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