Last Voyage of the Valentina
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4.3 • 28 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Set in London during the swinging sixties and Italy’s Amalfi coast after Word War II, The Last Voyage of the Valentina is an epic romance with a dark uncercurrent of suspense from an author the Daily Mail (UK) has declared “is the new Rosamunde Pilcher.”
Exotically beautiful but desperately unhappy, Alba lives on a houseboat on the Thames, where she enjoys a life of leisure and entertains an endless and unfulfilling succession of lovers. But then she discovers a portrait of her dead mother, Valentina—a woman she'd hardly known, whose story has been kept from her by her still grieving father. Determined to learn the truth about Valentina, Alba returns to the olive groves of the Amalfi coast of Italy. There she uncovers a mysterious tale of decadence, deception, murder, and betrayal involving partisans and Nazis, peasants, and counts. Alba's journey leads her not only to the truth of her mother’s hidden past but to the possibility of happiness in her own future.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Long-legged, lascivious Alba lives on a London houseboat, the Valentina, moored in 1971 London. She is the daughter of a WWII romance; her proper English father, Thomas Arbuckle, and stepmother ("the Buffalo") never mention her mysterious Italian mother Valentina who died when she was a baby. As a discovered sketch sparks Alba's curiosity about her mother's past, she takes up with literary agent Fitz Conroy, then breaks it off and goes to Italy to learn the truth about her past. Though this is Montefiore's U.S. debut, more than three million copies of her books are in print in the EU (the press chat notes that Charles and Camilla "made their debut as a couple" at Montefiore's wedding to historian Simon Sebag). Presumably, her EU translators were able to make lines like "Don't talk, you fool. Kiss me," sound more seductive and surprising in other languages than they do in the King's English.
Customer Reviews
Good read
Really enjoyed it, great characters good mystery and intrigue
Beautiful Story
Hard to put down