I was excited about reading this book, because I was actually in Venice at the time in which it is set, in the Christmas-New Year period in 2019, just before the World locked down. The stress about cruise ships damaging the delicate city was palpable.

I bought the book at Brisbane Airport to read on the plane to and from Japan in 2025. I’m glad I curbed my inclination to not buy a big trade paperback because I was sick in Japan and spent quite a few days confined to my room. It ended up being a perfect purchase.

Oh, the magic of sinking into a big book, reading for hours into the dead of the night, only the words for company and the imagery conjured by those words dancing in your head, jostling for your attention even when you aren’t reading it because of, well, real life things!

The story is told from the perspective of four characters:

Signora Loretta Bianchi, the world famous cook at Venice’s boutique, family-run Hotel Il Cuore, who is forced to choose between once-in-a-lifetime passion and her devoted husband.

Sophie, on assignment in Venice as a food writer, finds a lot more than Signora Bianchi’s secret recipes to love in the charming Rocco, son of Loretta, but what is he hiding?

Law graduate, Elena, is sinking just like the endangered city whence she’s returned home, and she’ll stop at nothing to be free from her marriage.

Grandmother Gayle’s dream Venetian holiday turns sinister as she finds herself embroiled in Elena’s life or death escape.

The city itself almost becomes a character as the narrative is split cleverly into twelve parts to mirror the twelve days of Christmas.

There are some serious themes woven through this story, characters who are carrying heavy burdens, facing huge choices, finding themselves at a crossroads, and coming to the realisation that they need help, they need to lean on someone, reach out to another, and embrace a sense of community that is all too often absent from our lives today.

The characters are so real, that you find yourself thinking about them as if you know them. And a place so beautifully realised on the page you feel as though you are there, right there, whenever you go back to reading about it. I don’t read big books very much anymore. And this is why. Because almost every time I pick one up, it just doesn’t deliver. But this one…this one…be still my reading heart. A glorious, compelling and brilliant read which I finished on the flight home.