lissac 's review for:

The Wedding Shroud by Elisabeth Storrs

3.0

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With a patrician mother and a plebian father, Caecilia has never been fully accepted into either society in ancient Rome. After the death of her parents, Caecilia lives with her uncle who uses her as a seal in a peace treaty with the Etruscans. Caecilia is to be married to Vel Mastarna, a man she has never met from a society as opposite as can be from hers. Where Romans are rigid and strict, the Etruscans are ‘sinful’, offering women the opportunity to practice religion and discuss politics, even in the company of men. Although Caecilia is married to Mastarna and leaves Rome, she vows to stay true to her Roman roots, but the longer she lives with Mastarna and his family, the easier it seems to be to lose her Roman culture. I liked this book, but the title confused me. Both when I purchased it, and when I started reading it, I thought that Caecilia ended up a widow and had to choose between Roman and Etruscan society. This is not a spoiler, because that’s not what happens in the book, so I suppose the main giveaway here is that Vel Mastarna doesn’t die. The wedding shroud within the book holds significance with the Etruscan society because those who are married are buried together underneath their wedding shroud. To me, it seemed like the author/editor could have found a better title for the book. It painted an inaccurate picture of what the book would be like to me, and I think if I went in with a different idea of what it was going to be about, I probably would have had a different experience. That said, the plot was interesting although I found Caecilia to become a bit annoying as a character. There is a great duality to her as a character with her patrician/plebian background which then evolves into a second duality of Roman/Etruscan. I would have loved to see Storrs dive more into ‘two’ Caecilia’s rather than focus on Caecilia whining about the Etruscan’s sin and whether or not she was capable of partaking and if she was capable of enjoying it.