Reviews with content warning for Emotional abuse - Diavola

A tense family vacation to Tuscany turns into a vivid and intimate gothic horror in this wild ride of a novel. Being new to Thorne's work, I came into this book with zero expectations, but I was immediately drawn in by the cover and the book's apparent inspiration in the vibrant contrasts of Florentine Renaissance art.

The protagonist Anna is a flawed, cynical artist working an unsatisfying design job and nurturing deeply toxic relationships with, apparently, everyone in her family. Her codependent twin brother, her insecure sister, her judgmental mother, and her father, who thinks the best way to deal with family tension is to ignore it outright. The only relations with whom she has a genuinely positive connection are her two young nieces who don't understand why their mother sometimes says mean things about Auntie Anna. At the start of the story, Anna is arriving in the Florentine hinterland to spend a couple weeks sharing a vacation rental with all of them.

Villa Taccola has all the aesthetic charm you'd expect from a Tuscan villa, but things are tense from the moment Anna arrives. Of course, much of the building tension comes from her unhealthy family dynamics, but that can't explain all of it. The family begins to notice strange sounds and shapes, unexplainable little disasters, and the locals all seem to be avoiding them.

To be honest, Anna probably jumps to the ghost conclusion sooner than I would, but there is no question that something is very wrong with Villa Taccola. Something that goes all the way back to its Renaissance roots.

The dread in this story may have started at a simmer, but the terror is at a full rolling boil for the last third of the book. The haunt itself plays with the genre's conventions while still managing to surprise.

What starts as a classically creepy vacation haunting turns into something much more intimate, playing on both the nature of toxic family ties and Anna's own significant personal issues. If you like a messy protagonist, Anna is the perfect disaster to pick apart.

The audiobook narration was great, capturing all the incongruous and contradictory facets of Anna's mind.

Very glad that I read this book, and I will definitely seek out more of Jennifer Thorne's writing.

Content Warnings

brulereads's review against another edition

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dark tense fast-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Holy ghosts! This was such a 'fun vacation' that I didn't want to put down the book.

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