This is a story about one girl's many bad decisions.
Though I found it quick to read through, it disappointed me at several turns.

The heroine, Amanda, is in love with the boy she grew up with, John Purvis. At her first ball, he gallantly looks after her and keeps her from falling into the clutches of her much older suitor, the despicable Lord Meynel. Amanda and John reach an understanding that as soon as he can make his fortune in the Navy, they will marry. Unfortunately, Amanda's mother, as well as Lord Meynel, have other plans, and Amanda ends up married to Lord Meynel. Her life is crashing into a great big pit of despair...partly because she's young and naive and too easily controlled, but still...it sets the story up for much darker themes than I had anticipated. Coercive/abusive marital conditions, adultery, illegitimacy, and so forth. It was a surprising change of mood from the only other book I have read by this author, and it took me aback.

The plot takes place partly in England and partly in Italy, during the years of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. Indeed, those events and the details surrounding them take up a little too much room on the page for my liking. I respect the author's intent to add true history and notable people to the narrative, but it felt a bit heavy-handed in this case.

I will read and hope to enjoy some of Jane Aiken Hodge's other works, but for me, this one was a miss.

I received a digital advance copy of a new edition of this via NetGalley. ( )

Historical fiction with a hint of romance, set in the early 1790s in England and Naples.

17-year-old Amanda is crushed when her childhood love John ships out to India the day after pledging his love. Beset by money problems, she bows to pressure and marries the aging, sadistic Lord Meynel. Soon thereafter, he whisks his young bride away to Naples, where they set up housekeeping. War with France has begun, and Naples is full of intrigue. When John Purvis reappears as an officer on one of Nelson's ships, Amanda is sure that he has come back for her. But nothing is as simple as it appears.

First published in 1996, and now available as an ebook, this is worth reading. But it is not a genre romance. ( )