I re-read this novel as a book club read ... the beginning is superb: two well-developed characters and a fascinating plot opening. There is reason to expect a wonderful love story set against the end of WWII in Italy. However, after 75 or so pages, the book falls apart. The plot expands to include uninteresting and confusing side stories. The girl, who is the glue, disappears. By the time she returns at the end, it is too late to save the story, and the ending is weak anyway. This was a great o...

I’m thankful to this novel for proving that I haven’t grown so cynical, after an acrimonious divorce this year, that I can’t still enjoy a good love story well told and that I can still enjoy lighter fiction without the dreaded literary snob within rising up and telling me off for wasting my reading time. This is a WW2 story set in Venice. A fisherman out on his boat at night discovers the body of a young female in the water. At first he assumes she’s dead. However she isn’t dead; she’s a Jewess...

3.5 STARSVenice, 1945. The war may be waning, but the city known as La Serenissima is still occupied and the people of Italy fear the power of the Third Reich. One night, under a canopy of stars, a fisherman named Cenzo comes across a young woman’s body floating in the lagoon and soon discovers that she is still alive and in trouble.Born to a wealthy Jewish family, Giulia is on the run from the SS. Cenzo chooses to protect Giulia rather than hand her over to the Nazis. This act of kindness leads...

I received a free ARC from NetGalley of this for review.A book with the word Girl in the title? I’ve never seen that before….*cough*In the last days of World War II in Europe an Italian fisherman named Cenzo hauls in what he thinks is the body of a dead young woman. Only she’s just playing possum, and Cenzo quickly finds out that Giulia is Jewish and on the run from Nazis who just killed her family. Cenzo hides Giulia, but it turns out that she has a secret that someone is desperate to cover up ...

3.5 Three brothers, Hugo whose death provides fodder later on, Giorgio who becomes an actor, the lion of Italy and later Mussolini's propaganda chief and Cenzio, who wants only to be a fisherman on his island Pellistrina , plying his trade on the Ventian canals. On one such trip he discovers a young girl floating in the canal, a Jewish girl who has escaped the death of her father and others. Cenzio's life as a peaceful fisherman will come to an abrupt end.I found this an engaging read, much of i...

I don't know how to say this any other way but I loved this book. Cenzo Vianello is one of my favorite characters in a book ever. He is exactly what he is, a fisherman in the lagoons near Venice, Italy. I had no idea that they fished there. I always just pictured it was full of gondolas but apparently before and during WWII, they did. Besides being a fisherman he is the brother of Italy's famous and handsome actor and Mussolini spokesman, Giorgio. Giorgio had seduced Cenzo's wife and swept her...

The Girl From Venice- 2.5 stars...When I opted to read The Girl From Venice I was hoping for an engaging war story rich in the Venetian atmosphere but instead of feeling completely immersed in the story and time period, I felt more like an outsider looking in. If you've ever been with a group of people that are talking about something that happened when you weren't there, so you don't quite get what the fuss is about, then you'll understand how I felt about the author's writing. It seemed like w...

This is an engaging historical thriller set in Venice and Salo in Italy in 1945. This is an Italy in turmoil, overflowing with German troops, some looking for vengeance as it becomes clear that Hitler has lost power, a confined Mussolini trying to escape with his mistress. and Italian families having divided loyalties and the uncertainties that come with new realities. Cenzo, a fisherman, has conflicting relationships with his family, his mother is trying to hitch him up with Celestina, Hugo, hi...

An entertaining historical thriller with the atmospherics of a romance in war time that gives it that “Casablanca” flavor. Cenzo is a thirty-something fisherman who saves an aristocratic Jewish teen, Guilia, from the Nazis and tries to keep her safe in an environment in which virtually no one can be trusted. The sense of the world going to hell in a handbasket and death looming behind every door is often the backdrop for romance, but the bonds in this case feel more like a case of creating a pro...

2.5 starsIt's been awhile since I've read a book by Martin Cruz Smith. I enjoyed Gorky Park and a few others in the Arkady Renko series but then didn't care for one and gave up on him. So I was pleased that netgalley provided me with an advance copy of The Girl From Venice so I could give him another chance. Cruz Smith’s writing is sparse. He tells the story without much in the way of embellishment. The story takes place at the end of WII in Italy. The Germans are desperate and no one knows who ...