The Girl from Lake Maggiore by Siobhan Daiko

 

Young Italian woman Giulia Leone lives on the shores of Lake Maggiore in Northern Italy. Her father runs a hotel and amongst the guests are some Jewish people, including Ester who is her best friend. It is 1943 and the Germans approaching Giulia and her family come up with a plan to help their Jewish guests, but it all goes terribly wrong. Giulia is the only person to escape. She doesn't know what happened to any of them, including her own parents, and now she finds herself on the German's wanted list. 

After finding a safe house for a while, it soon becomes clear that the Germans are still determined to find her. She therefore has no choice but to head to the hills and join a small band of partisans who are lead by Raffaele, the son of the hotel manager. Raffaele resents being lumbered with a spoilt rich girl but soon he begins to appreciate her willingness to work hard for the cause. However, she is not always keen to follow orders, especially as she is determined to find out what happened to her friends and her parents, 

Lake Maggiore straddles the border between Italy and Switzerland so you can see why people would head to that area in the hope of being able to escape from persecution, and if you have a look at the pictures it looks like a gorgeous part of Italy. I was glad to see that there were moments where the characters could appreciate the views, even if it was just for a fleeting moment

I do enjoy the stories that Siobhan Daiko brings us. This is the fifth book featuring Girls and each is set in a different region and often the stories are based on true events from WWII. They aren't strictly a series given that there aren't recurring characters. I have read The Girl from Venice, from Sicily and now from Lake Maggiore (as well as some of her other books set in Italy) but I still need to read Portofino and Bologna. I think I own both of them. Actually though, my introduction was through one of her book set in the Pacific theatre of war and I would love it if we got another story from there. 

This time though, the book didn't work as well as it might have. Some of the dialogue seemed somewhat simplistic and it detracted from the overall reading experience. It could be that it is not that different from previous books but I did really notice it this time.

Will I still be reading the next book from this author. Most likely! 

I am sharing this review with the New Release Challenge hosted at The Chocolate Lady's Book Review Blog and the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge which I host here.

Rating 3.5/5

This week...

I'm reading

This week I had finished several books and two of them were 5 star reads. That has to count as a good reading week right? The first one was Us Against You by Fredrik Backman, which is the second book in the Beartown trilogy! I did pick up the third book in the trilogy from the library as well, and it is a very big book! I am looking forward to reading it!

I then finished The Girl from Lake Maggiore by Siobhan Daiko. I actually started this book a few weeks ago but I put it aside. When I was trying to decide what to read after finishing my last book, I figured I should probably finish that one!

I also started reading The Resistance Knitting Club by Jenny O'Brien for a blog tour later this week. So far I am enjoying it a lot

When my read on a theme book club chose the theme of Childhood Favourite, I decided pretty quickly that I was going to read Jean Plaidy as I read every one of her books I could get through my school library when I was 12 or 14. I have a whole stack of her books which I got from someone, and there were two copies of The Goldsmith's Wife so I took that as a sign that I should read that book. It was only on Wednesday night that I realised that I only had two day to get it read before the meeting! I loved it though and gave it 5 stars. That could be related to the nostalgia of reading one of her books after so many years.

There was only a small group of us at book club for the first meeting of the year and these were the books that we talked about. The next theme is a Book Someone Lent You!

Best of

In January I read 14 books and had quite a few that were 4.5 star reads. The two that were 5 star reads for me were Us Against You by Fredrik Backman and The Goldsmith's Wife by Jean Plaidy, which are pictured at the top of the post.

Books let our imaginations travel where our feet cannot - Nora Nguyen

Here are all the places I travelled in my reading this month

Europe

UK - The Sweet Life Café, The Goldsmith's Wife 

Ireland - So Late in the Day 

Croatia - The Croatian Island Library

Norway - The Arctic Cruise 

France - The Boulangerie on the Corner

Sweden - Us Against You 

Italy - The Girl from Lake Maggiore 

US

New York - The Housemaid 

Australia

NT/SA - Everyone on this Train is a Suspect 

Asia

Japan - Dinner at the Night Library 

Japan/Korea/US - Flashlight

Korea - Soyangri Book Kitchen

I'm watching


Nothing in particular really

Life

On Saturday night we went to a new show that is on at the casino in the city. It was called Piper's Playhouse and is an interesting mix of Paris cabaret, magic, drag, burlesque and circus type acts. The acts were very, very good, and the night was a lot of fun. After the show, the venue turns into a piano bar and the crowd really got into it! I think even the pianist was a bit surprised by some of the things that the crowd did last night!

In the photo above, the show that you see is actually all made of white chocolate and was filled with fresh berries!

Posts from the last week


Top Ten Tuesday: New to Me Authors I Read in 2025
Flashlight by Susan Choi
Mini Reviews: Two Novels Set in Japan
Weekend Cooking/Cook the Books: Bite by Bite by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Wrapping Up January in Japan 2026
Historical Fiction Reading Challenge: February links


I've linked this post to It's Monday, what are you reading? as hosted by Book Date, Sunday Salon hosted at Readerbuzz and the Good Book and a Cup of Tea link up hosted at Boondock Ramblings

This week

I'm reading

Happy New Year everyone! 

The beginning of the year means resetting everything, including the counter for the number of books read. However, the counter now sits at 2 after the first 4 days of the year. Admittedly I finished two books yesterday otherwise it would still be at zero. 

I finished reading The Sweet Life Cafe by Helen Rolfe which I really enjoyed. It is set on an island in the Channel Islands. In the list of books it is shown as a standalone novel, but it really does feel like it could be the start of a duology or trilogy! I am planning to review this later in the month!

I also read So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan. Her books are very short, but they do pack a punch!

Finally, I started reading The Girl from Lake Maggiore by Siobhan Daiko.

Books let our imaginations travel where our feet cannot - Nora Nguyen

Bookish travel

Here's where I travelled too through the pages of books during December

Asia

Japan - The Menu of Happiness, Best Wishes from the Full Moon Coffee Shop

Europe

Scotland  - The Secret Christmas Library

Britain - Golden Girls on the Run, Hot Desk, The War Time Library, One December Morning, 

Ireland - The Oyster Catcher

Normally this is where I talk about my best books for the month before. I read 8 books in December and they were all good but there was nothing exceptional. I gave every book I read a grading of 4/5. That may well also reflect how busy my brain is with other things!

I'm watching

We went to the movies on New Year's Eve and watched Nuremberg which stars Russell Crowe as Hermann Goerring, Rami Malek and Leo Woodall. It tells the story of the Nuremberg war trials, starting with the arrest of Goerring through to the verdicts in the first trial. It's a serious subject but the movie was very compelling. Here's the trailer

After we got home we watched the concert from Sydney leading up to the always spectacular fireworks. We do get a bit of a show in our local area with all the illegal fireworks!

On the lighter side we also watched Big Fat Quiz of the Year, hosted by Jimmy Carr, which is always a fun way to revisit some of the bigger stories of the year.

Life

On New Year's Day we decided to go and visit the Melbourne Museum where they currently have an exhibition called Treasures of the Viking Age which all about the Galloway Horde which was found in Scotland in 2014. The exhibition itself was very interesting. We also took the opportunity to take a look around the other parts of the museum. They have recently reopened the natural history part of the museum with all the stuffed animals etc. It is now very modern, very interactive with the use of lots of technology like screens etc. It's a very different space to what it was when I used to take my son to the museum! My favourite part is the garden, and it was great to see so many families out there!


Posts from the last week


Top Ten Tuesday: Most Recent Additions
One December Morning by Emma Davies
Historical Fiction Reading Challenge - January
January in Japan: Since the last January in Japan
In My Kitchen: December
Six Degrees of Separation: The Four Dutchmen to Case Histories


I've linked this post to It's Monday, what are you reading? as hosted by Book Date, Sunday Salon hosted at Readerbuzz and the Good Book and a Cup of Tea link up hosted at Boondock Ramblings

Top Ten Tuesday: 10 Degrees of Separation

Welcome to this week's edition of Top Ten Tuesday which is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week's theme is Books You’d be a Fool Not to Read (Happy April Fool’s Day! In honor of this silly holiday, share the books you think people must read for whatever reason. They could be your favorites, books you deem classics, books that you learned something important from, books you wish you’d read sooner, etc. You could even narrow it down to a specific genre and share the must-reads for that genre. Get creative!)

I am not really feeling this as a topic so I have decided to be a fool in a different way. Every month, I participate in a meme called Six Degrees of Separation. It is a monthly meme hosted by Kate from Books Are My Favourite and Best. The idea is to start with a specific book and make a series of links from one book to the next using whatever link you can find and see where you end up after six links.

You can choose to make the links between books in any way that you like. It could be from a word in the title, part of the authors name, a cover that reminds you of another book, the subject of the book. It really is just a big game of association. In order to start things off, I am going to choose to use the last book I mentioned in last week's Top Ten Tuesday post and see where that takes me using 10 books instead of the normal 7!

So how does this make me foolish? Because I am doing the wrong meme!

My starting point is White Mulberry by Rosa Kwon Easton as it was the last book that I mentioned in last week's Top Ten Tuesday post. 

One of the main characters names in Daughters of Tuscany by Siobhan Daiko is Rosa which connects nicely to the author's name for the previous book. (my review)

I am choosing to use the fact that the main setting for Still Life by Sarah Winman is Florence which is  the capital city of Tuscany This book is almost a love letter to the city.

From there I am choosing to use the word Life from the title and choose Life After Life by Kate Atkinson 

Another Kate whose writing I enjoy is Kate Forsyth who writes phenomenal fairy tale retellings wrapped up in historical fiction. Normally I would pick Bitter Greens but this time I am going with The Beast's Garden which is set against the backdrop of WWII.

Next I am choosing Briar Rose by Jane Yolen. This is another fairytale retelling I enjoyed, once again set during WWII. There are even some similar motifs on the cover of both of these books. (my review)

Using the word Rose and the WWII setting as the links I am choosing The Rose Code by Kate Quinn, which is about the codebreakers working at Bletchley during WWII. 

Still focusing on WWII settings, and the work of codebreakers, this time Australian women who were based in Brisbane, I have chosen The Codebreakers by Alli Sinclair

I hadn't really intended to have so many WWII connections, but here is another one. My main link though is that both authors have the same first name. I have therefore chose At the Foot of the Cherry Tree by Alli Parker as my next link.  

And finally, I am using the word tree as my link to Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak . (my review)

So there we have it! 10 books linked by various different means taking us from a Korean woman living in Japan in the lead up to WWII to a book where the Cypriot characters are living in London following years of conflict on their island. I inadvertently ended up with quite a few WWII books, as well as several books with roses on the cover!

I would mention that there are lots of option with every level of this there are multiple different ways you could go. For example, I saw Sarah Winman at Melbourne Writers Festival a few years ago now, so I could have picked any other author who I have seen at MWF as my next choice and the chain would have ended up looking very different, and everyone's chains are always unique. Do you think you would have fun doing this exercise?

This Week ....

I'm reading

I got a bit of reading done this week, including a book that I totally did not expect to read!

I had to finish The Shadow on the Bridge by Clare Marchant, so that I could review it, which I did last week. You can see the review here. 

I then saw that  Susanna Kearsley was doing a webinar about her latest book The King's Messenger. I have this book, but I haven't read it yet. As she was talking I looked at my bookshelves to see which of her books I had to hand, and there was The Winter Sea! This was the first book I ever read by Kearsley and it made me an instant fan. I thought I would just read a couple of chapters, but you know how that goes. I ended up rereading it again. Given that I don't often reread, and this is the fourth time I have read this book, I guess you would have to call it a favourite. 

What I should have been reading was The Girl from Sicily by Siobhan Daiko. Fortunately I had some pretty solid reading time on two flights this weekend, so it is now finished, and the review will be up next week. 

On the second flight, I also started The Full Moon Coffee Shop by Mai Mochizuki. We are going to Japan very shortly so I wanted to try and read at least a couple of Japanese books. This one is a bit unusual so far!

Finally, I had picked up Sunbirds by Mirandi Riwoe from the library a couple of weeks ago on a whim, which was probably a bit silly given that I knew that I was going to struggle to read it before we went away. However, I started reading it last week. I read the prologue, which is about the bombing of Broome during WWII, and was really moved by it. I even gave it to my husband and said read this. When I went to school I don't recall really being taught that places like Broome and Darwin were bombed during the war. I think most people would know about Darwin now, but I don't think the other bombings would be as well known. We visited Broome a couple of years ago so are familiar with the history. I am definitely going to be trying to finish this book in the next couple of days before we go.

I'm watching

I came across a list of lesser known war movies so I think we are going to start working our way through some of these. 

The first one we watched was a Dutch movie called The Forgotten Battle, which is about the Battle of the Scheldt. It was actually pretty interesting. It followed a few different storylines until bringing it all together. Here's the trailer

Life

We did something a bit different last week and went and saw a play. While we go and see a lot of music, comedy and musical theatre, we don't go and see as much normal theatre. We went and saw the play based on Agatha Christie's book And Then There Were None. I haven't read a lot of Agatha Christie but I am tempted to get this one and see how the stage adaptation compares to the book.

I mentioned that we were on two flights. This is because we went up to Brisbane for the weekend. Well, really it was 24 hours as we flew up on Saturday morning and back on Sunday afternoon. The reason we went was because it is my stepson's 21st birthday this week. We had teppanyaki for dinner, which is always fun!

I am considering those as a practice run for the much longer flights that we have later this week! I don't think that I will have much internet access while we are on our cruise so it likely that I won't be doing one of these posts for the next couple of weeks! 

Posts from the last week

Top Ten Tuesday: Books Where a House is a Character
Blog Tour: Love & Laughter (and Other Disasters) by Elora Canne

Blog Tour: The Shadow on the Bridge by Clare Marchant
Weekend Cooking: Chicken and Mushroom Bake (Jamie Oliver)

Sunday Salon: Spell the Month in Books


I've linked this post to It's Monday, what are you reading? as hosted by Book Date and Sunday Salon hosted at Readerbuzz

Blog Tour: Daughters of Tuscany by Siobhan Daiko

 

Yes, it is Paris in July time, but I am taking a quick detour to Italy for this post. Never fear, I will be back in France again tomorrow.

I have read a number of Siobhan Daiko's books, and so when I saw that there was an upcoming blog tour, of course I am going to volunteer. My first book by this author was set in the Pacific theatre of WWII, but the rest have been set in Italy, which is where she lives, although she is British originally.

What I like about her books is that she takes lesser known stories from WWII and fictionalises them to share with her readers. With a title like Daughters of Tuscany, it will be no surprise that this story is set in Tuscany, but it is in a small valley called. Initially, the war is not that near to Emma and Rosa, our two main characters. The main impact is in the loss of the men who help run the estate owned by Emma's father, Marchese Ginori. Rosa's family are tenants of the Marchese. 

The Marchese is able to get some POWs to help with the farm, which brings Rosa into contact with a Scottish soldier named Tom. Rosa is determined that she is going to stay away from Tom. She has already suffered great loss thanks to the war, which has left her to raise her daughter alone, and she is determined not to risk heartbreak again. 

Meanwhile, Emma and her father walk a fine line in trying to navigate dealing with the German's, helping their people to survive, and helping the resistance fighters who hide in the nearby forests and mountains.

However, with the Allies advancing from the south of Italy and the Germans moving northwards, the fighting gets closer and closer, bring different types of danger for each of them with it.

Recently, I was at an author event where a publisher speaking about the fact that we seem to be moving away from WWII fiction. I still love WWII fiction, but it has to be something different, something exceptional. I liked this book, although I do feel like the premise is kind of safe, by which I mean it isn't anything I haven't really read before. I do also feel like there were times when I could see the editor, particularly in the early parts of the book. That aside, the story was engaging, there were strong female characters, and it does tell an interesting story.

Thanks to Netgalley, the publisher and Rachel's Random Resources for the review copy. I am sharing this review with the New Release Challenge hosted at The Chocolate Lady's Book Review Blog and with the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge which I host.

About the Book

Daughters of Tuscany

Two women, one community, everyone’s war…

With the arrival of English prisoners of war on Marchese Ginori’s farmhouse estate, Rosa is immediately wary. Her husband was killed by the Allies and she will not trust any inglesi around her daughter.

The marchese’s daughter, Emma, is thankful for the extra help. Especially when Italian soldiers are forced into hiding, fleeing the Nazis. Emma vows to protect her childhood best friend, Marco, at any cost.

It’s a dangerous time to be harbouring fugitives, and as the POWs prove their allegiance in helping the Italian men, Rosa begins to become close to one in particular – an alluring Scotsman named Tom.

Both women will do what it takes to protect their loved ones, but daring to hope for a better future in wartime is a dangerous dream. And what starts as a quest to keep their men safe soon turns into a mission to save their whole community…

A sweeping tale of love, loss and hope in times of strife, perfect for fans of Fiona Valpy, Rhys Bowen and Kristin Hannah

 

Purchase Link - https://mybook.to/daughterssocial

About the author:

Siobhan Daiko is a British historical fiction author. A lover of all things Italian, she lives in the Veneto region of northern Italy with her husband, a Havanese dog and a Siberian cat. Siobhan was born of English parents in Hong Kong, attended boarding school in Australia, and then moved to the UK — where she taught modern foreign languages in a Welsh high school. She now spends her time writing page-turners and living the dolce vita sweet life near Venice. Her novels are compelling, poignant, and deeply moving, with strong characters and evocative settings, but always with romance at their heart. You can find more about her books on her website www.siobhandaiko.org

Social Media Links –  

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/siobhan.daiko.author

Twitter https://twitter.com/siobhandaiko

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/siobhandaiko_asolandobooks/

Newsletter Sign Up: https://bit.ly/SiobhanDaikoNews

Bookbub profile: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/siobhan-daiko

This Week....

I'm reading

Last week I shared that I was feeling a little unsettled reading wise, mainly because I couldn't decide what I wanted to read. This week I fixed that by finishing all the books that I had started recently, plus getting ahead on my review reading! It's been a busy reading week

I finished both Daughters of Tuscany by Siobhan Daiko and Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-Reum. My review for Daughters of Tuscany will be up in the next couple of days. I also finished The Readers Room by Antoine Laurain

I also started and finished A Love Letter to Paris by Rebecca Raisin, which I will also have a review of in the next few days.

Amazon Prime Reads included The Bookstore Wedding by Alice Hoffman this month, so I picked that up and read it very quickly. It really is a short story, coming in at around 30-40 pages. There was a lot in that short story though!

Finally, I decided to start read The Stolen Hours, which is the second book in the Wild Isle Trilogy by Karen Swan. I have decided that this is going to be my Scottish book for my read on a theme book club.

That feels like a lot this week!

I'm watching


We are now into the second week of Tour de France, and we tend to watch around an hour or so each night! Every night there is a 5 minute cooking show which features the food of the region that the bike race is visiting, called Plat du Tour which I really enjoy!

It's hard to believe that before I met my husband I had only ever seen one Star Wars movie, and that that was on a date. Now I end up watching everything as it comes out. This week we started watching The Acolyte which is the latest series.

This was the last weekend of the Spanish Film Festival, so I convince hubby to come and see a movie called The Teacher Who Promised the Sea, which was a really movie film. It's the story of a woman who is looking for her great-grandfather who went missing in the 1930s. Along the way she learns about her grandfather's childhood, and the role a teacher played in it. This teacher really existed which makes the story even more moving. I definitely recommend both this movie, and the one that I talked about last week as well.

Here's the trailer:

I have had another Spanish film called Lemon and Poppyseed Cake on my to be watched list for a couple of years but I hadn't been able too find where I could stream it. I was looking for something else when I stumbled across it so I had  to watch it. This was very different to the other movie, feels a bit more soapie, but I liked the story and now I need to make someting lemony and poppyseedy!


Life

Other than what I mentioned above not a lot to tell life wise. We are counting down to our holidays which will be here before we know it. I think all the main things are booked

Posts from the last week


Top Ten Tuesday: Purple!

Paris in July: Since Last Paris in July

Paris in July: An Astronomer in Love by Antoine Laurain

Weekend Cooking: What I Baked in my Kitchen in June

Six Degrees of Separation: Kairos to A Nurses Life


I've linked this post to It's Monday, what are you reading? as hosted by Book Date

This week.....

I'm reading

I mentioned last week that I started to read Welcome to the Hyanum-Dong Bookstore by Hwang Bo-Reum. I am still reading this book. I am not really sure why it hasn't really grabbed my attention as there is a lot to like, but it is a slow read for me.

I also started reading my next review book, Daughters of Tuscany by Siobhan Daiko. I like it, but it does feel a bit like other books I have read.

I am feeling a bit unsettled when it comes to books. I also started The Readers Room by Antoine Laurain. This is probably the one that has caught my attention the most but if I do have some due dates that I need to be conscious of.

When I finished my last audiobook I declared that I would be listening to something fluffier next. Whilst that was my intention, I am not sure I was completely successful. It might just be a different version of intense. I started listening to Sidelines by Karen Viggers which is the next Rachael Johns' Book Club choice. I must confess it wouldn't normally be something that I would choose to read but that's book clubs for you, right?

Speaking of book clubs we had our face-to-face,  read-on-a-theme book club meeting on Saturday. I was called an overachiever because I read 3 and a half books that met the theme, which was translated books. Whilst I am sure that I will have no issue finding a book to meet the next theme which is Scotland, I doubt I will be reading that many books next month.


I'm watching


This week I started watching Series 2 of Stuff the British Stole. I watched all of series 1 a couple of weeks ago and found it fascinating. I will definitely finish this series in the upcoming week.

I also started watching the TV series adaptation of Women in Black. I have a few episodes to catch up on now.

I will also be spending some time over the coming weeks watching Tour de France!

On Saturday night we went to the movies to see The Movie Teller, which is being shown as part of the Spanish Film Festival. It's actually a Chilean movie, which tells the story of a family who live in a remote part of the country where the father worked in the saltpetre mines. The family loves the cinema and each week they go together. When the father has an accident they can no longer attend and so they send just one of the kids to the cinema and they have to come home and recount the movie. In addition, the movie tells the story of what happened in Chilean history from the 1960s to the 1980s. It is really in the movie part that this story shines. I am definitely glad that we got to see it.

Here's the trailer:

Life

Last week, Bree from All the Books I Can Read went to see Rebecca Yarros at Melbourne Town Hall where she talked about all things Fourth Wing and Iron Flame . When we arrived the queue to get in went half way around the block which means that there were several thousand people in the crowd! As you would expect this was a younger audience than there was when I went to see Bonnie Garmus but we certainly weren't the oldest in the crowd by a long way.

Rebecca Yarros was a lot of fun to listen to. I suspect she is asked very similar questions at each event as her answers did seem well practiced. There were also lots of things that she couldn't talk about, especially in relation to the TV adaptation which is being done by Amazon. Having said that, I left the event having smiled and laughed, so you can't ask for much more than that! And of course, I am definitely looking forward to the next book

Posts from the last week

Top Ten Tuesday: Most Anticipated Books Being Released During the Second Half of 2024.

Weekend Cooking: 5 Ingredient Mediterranean by Jamie Oliver

I've linked this post to It's Monday, what are you reading? as hosted by Book Date

Top Ten Tuesday: Trees

Welcome to this week's edition of Top Ten Tuesday which is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. Covers/Titles with Things Found in Nature (covers/titles with things like trees, flowers, animals, forests, bodies of water, etc. on/in them) (Submitted by Jessica @ a GREAT read) I am choosing to focus on trees for my post!

At the Foot of the Cherry Tree by Alli Parker - Listened to this on audio this year and it was really good! It is a fictionalised story of how her grandparents met just after WWII in Japan.

The Flame Tree by Siobhan Daiko - If you are looking for a WWII story set in the Pacific theatre of war, then this could be a good option.

Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak - This was one of my favourite reads of 2022.

Under the Christmas Tree by Robyn Carr - This is part of the Virgin River series.

The Drowning Tree by Carol Goodman - I have read a number of this author's books but it has been a while.

Family Tree by Barbara Delinsky - I don't remember anything about this book. To be fair, I did read it back in 2008.

The Red Tree by Shaun Tan - This is another author I haven't read for a long time.

The Persimmon Tree by Bryce Courtenay - I often think about the love story in this book.

Apple Tree Yard by Louise Doughty - I have had this book sitting on my shelf for a couple of years now.

The Cedar Tree by Nicole Alexander - This is one that has been sitting on my Kindle for a while! The description does sound good.

Blog Tour: The Tuscan Orphan by Siobhan Daiko

I have read a number of Siobhan Daiko's books now. I have enjoyed the ones set in Asia, but I really liked the previous books set in Italy. This was therefore a book that I volunteered to read straight away. 

In this book there are really two stories which converge into one meaningful arc.  One is the story of a Texan nurse named Carrie, and the other is a young man named Vito who is a resistance fighter. The first part of the really story is really giving us Carrie's story as the author gets her to where she needs to be

Carrie is a nurse in the American Army who finds herself stationed initially in Africa but subsequently in various places in Italy. In one of the locations a young girl is bought into the hospital with a head injury. The girl's name is Mimi, and she is the daughter of a Jewish couple who have gone missing. As Carrie cares for her, she becomes more and more attached to her and determined to find her parents.

Mimi had been found sheltering in a convent by Vito when he was looking for his sister. Vito was also injured and as a result Carrie and Vito start spending time together. At first, Carrie was reluctant to let her feelings for Vito to grow stronger because he was younger than her, but also, more importantly because war had already resulted in heartbreak.

I appreciated that we truly got to feel the uncertainty of never knowing where Carrie would be assigned to next, the fear of the falling bombs even in hospital where there should be no bombings at all, and the unbearable loss of loved ones.

Whilst I really enjoyed this book, there were times where I felt like the research was showing in the story. There's no doubt that there would have been a lot of interesting research, especially seeing as so many of the characters were based on real people and events.

The author talks about her love of Italy, and it really shows. Her descriptions of the countryside had me wishing that I could visit the areas described. I also found myself thinking about how amazing it is that so much of the country was rebuilt in the aftermath of the destruction of WWII, and that it is available to us to still see now.

The author's note mentions that her next book will once again be set in Italy, and I am there for it!

Thanks to the publisher, Netgalley and Rachel's Random Resources for the review copy. I will also be sharing this review with the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge which I host.

About the book:

The Tuscan Orphan

1944 - When an air raid strikes the hospital she’s been working in, Carrie’s life irrevocably changes. But as a nurse in the middle of wartime, she has no time to grieve, as she has too many people relying on her.

For resistance fighter, Vito, nothing is more important than seeking vengeance for the atrocities his fellow comrades have suffered. But when he liberates a convent, finding a group of Jewish children in hiding, he suddenly has even more to fight for.

Little Mimi is injured, scared and alone. Together Carrie and Vito vow to find her parents, a loving home. But under the shadow of war, is it wise to make promises you’re not sure you can keep?

Heartbreaking and immersive, this powerful story of the strength of the human spirit will delight fans of Kristin Hannah, Fiona Valpy and Rhys Bowen

Purchase Link - https://mybook.to/tuscanorphansocial

About the author

Siobhan Daiko writes powerful and sweeping historical fiction set in Italy during the second World War, with strong women at its heart. She now lives near Venice, having been a teacher in Wales for many years.



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Top Ten Tuesday: Historical Fiction

 

 

 

 

 

Welcome to this week's edition of Top Ten Tuesday which is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week is a genre freebie, so I am choosing to share the last ten Historical Fiction novels I have read.

Escape to Tuscany by Kat Deveraux - A dual timeline WWII novel set in Tuscany (review)

The Girl from Venice by Siabhon Daiko - A dual timeline WWII novel set in Venice (review)

The War Nurses by Anthea Hodgson - Another WWII novel, but this time it is not dual timeline and is set in the Pacific theatre

The Book Binders of Jericho by Pip Williams - Not even WWII! This one is a companion book to The Dictionary of Lost Words

The Girl Who Escaped by Angela Petch - A novel set in WWII Italy. There's a bit of a theme happening this year apparently (review)

The Forgotten Palace by Alexandra Walsh - This is a dual timeline set in Crete in the late 1899s (review)

My Father's House by Joseph O'Connor - a mystery set in WWII Italy - really good read!

The Kitchen Front by Jennifer Ryan - This is a WWII novel about 4 women competing in a cooking competition on the radio (review)

The Flame Tree by Siobhan Daiko - Another WWII novel, this time set in Hong Kong (review)

The Proxy Bride by Zoe Boccabella - The story of an Italian woman who migrates to Australia just before WWII and her descendants.

It would appear that I am reading a lot of books set in Italy and WWII books, as well as women in red dresses on the cover!! Have you read any of these books? What's the last historical fiction book you read?