Full Review on NetGalley

'The Echoes of Love.' It did not disappoint.

It was exciting and heart-pounding watching and listening to Venetia’s thoughts. I loved the beautiful descriptive narrative of Venice.
Echoes of Love is a deeply enchanting, moving, riveting, and carefully crafted read.
( )

I received this book for free from the author in exchange for an honest review.

This is an odd book for me to rate because I found the first half of the book to be 2 stars, but the second half was 4 stars. My final rating for this is 3 stars, which is the average of the two.

On an unrelated note, when I first saw that one of the epigraphs was an excerpt from Burnt Norton I was really happy. I love that poem mainly because Lana Del Rey recites it for her interlude on her Honeymoon album and I love Lana Del Rey.

So the first half of the book was 2 things: slow and cringe worthy.

In regards to its slowness, I thought that it took way too long to get to Tuscany. It took nearly 150 pages for our main character, Venetia, to finally get there. I felt like the story didn’t actually start until she arrived. A lot of the first half of the book was Venetia being wishy washy towards Paolo. She would think to herself, I love Paolo. Then the next page she would be like, I don’t love Paolo. That continued regularly until about half way through and made the book go by so slowly. I got pretty annoyed with her because she could not make up her mind. A good portion of the first half could have been removed because it was all really repetitive.

As for the cringe worthy parts, there were two lines in particular that drove me nuts. The first line described Venetia as having “neither racial or social prejudices” (41). Like okay. That’s kind of an odd thing to say in a book. The second line was when Venetia asked the Chinese fortune teller, “How come you speak such perfect English” (98). As someone who is half Asian, I really have an issue with that. It just adds to the perpetual foreigner stereotype that gets attached to Asians. It wasn’t even a necessary question for the story. Another thing that had me cringing was how predatory the males were in the beginning. Count Umberto was so horrible and even Paolo was a bit too much with his constant demands.

But then the book moved to Tuscany and things got a whole lot better. Paolo and Venetia became less annoying. There were conflicts which finally got the story moving (I loved Allegra’s character. She was really interesting). The romance finally heated up. A lot of the time it reminded me of Jane Eyre and Beauty and the Beast, which isn’t surprising considering Beauty and the Beast (the original fairy tale version) is mentioned on page 304 and Jane Eyre is mentioned in the author’s Q and A at the end of the book. I could definitely see the inspiration and since I love both of those I did end up enjoying the second half.

As for the big reveal at the end, I had already figured it out by that point so I wasn’t super surprised by it.

Overall, this wasn’t the best romance due to its overly long beginning but the second half saved this book from becoming a disaster. I’m am curious to read more from Hannah Fielding because out of all her books on Goodreads this one has the lowest average rating of only 3.66. All her other books have an average rating of over 4. I’m hoping that this book was just a fluke and not representation of her writing as a whole. ( )

The Echoes of Love, a novel by Hannah Fielding, opens in Venice in 2000. Venetia moved there from England in an attempt to build a new life for herself after suffering a life altering tragedy. She will not allow anyone else to ever hurt her again. One evening the mysterious Paolo saves her from an attack. Paolo has suffered a personal tragedy as well and even though he is known to be a playboy it is Venetia who captures his heart. Venetia is admittedly attracted to him, but does everything in her power to resist his attempts at romance. Paolo is a persistent man and just when it seems that he and Venetia can have true love their happiness is threatened. Shocking secrets are revealed and lives are changed.
This is a stunningly told epic love story. By using lush imagery and beautiful prose the author has crafted a engrossing and passionate tale. The reader is transported to the wonders, culture and beauty of Venice and Tuscany.

I found this to be a remarkable novel and I highly recommend reading it. ( )

Note: A Review of this book is live @ Readers' Muse

The first line of the summary was just about enough for me to fall for the book. I admit! I am shamelessly attracted to anything Italian – be it the culture or the food. Watching too much of TLC channel left me bewitched and besotted with Italian city so much so that visiting Italy at least once in this life time has become top in my “things to do before I die” list. Also, having worked with Italians professionally, I quite enjoy their culture.

I had set obnoxiously high standards for this book just because the story was set in Italy. But when the book landed on my door step I did chastise myself for being a hopeless “Italian Romantic”. I almost dreaded that I would come to regret my decision of picking up this book for the book was quite heavy to begin with. It has been ages since I read 400 odd pages paperback copy. Books these days are no longer than 350 pages. But when I finished reading the book I was truly happy for not missing such a beautiful book.

To start with, the book cover was beautiful. The eye mask and the title of the book is glossily embossed in black against a beautiful cream background thus giving it a rich texture.

Our protagonist, Venetia is a restoration specialist with a traumatic past. The love of her life “left” her and she lost their love child in a freak accident. She escapes from the clutches of her traumatic past and her strict father by moving to Venice to work for her godmother in her architect firm. For some odd reason, Zia (the god mother) reminds me of Meryl Streep from the movie The Devil Wears a Prada. Venetia falls in love with Paolo, the handsome Italian who again has his own share of traumatic past. So do they actually find each other? Obviously yes, they do. But what matters is the narration of the “how”.

The narration was bang on. Italy was described so beautifully that with pages that I turned, my desperation to visit that country increased exponentially. To make matters worse the story was written so beautifully. The beauty of courtship narrated against a back drop of a romantic city is indeed an intoxicating combination. Being a late (like horribly late) bloomer in discovering Love & Romance Literature, this story ended up leaving me with a fluttering heart and a flipping stomach!

The characterisation was perfect and realistic. Due to this, the emotions that the writer tried to convey were eerily realistic. I felt like I was living in the middle of the story. Till date only one book
(or a series maybe….) had managed to do that to me. No prizes for guessing which book.

My only weeny tiny qualm though would be that there was a bit of drag in story – The book would have been better off without that “evil witch girl” in play. And of course, the climax was predictable, though I can’t really put my finger on why I was able to predict it in spites of a gripping tale with very minimal loophole in the plot.

To sum it up, this story is akin to the perfect coffee served in a traditional fashion. Such books are hard to come by in the age of Vending machine quality quicke romance (er….may be like the slurry liquid that my work place’s vending machine serves me in the name of coffee?!)

VERDICT: This book is strictly for people who love to read literature and beautiful romances. If you can’t admire the beauty of courtship and true romance don’t dare touch this book.

RATING: 4.9 on 5 ( )

I was attracted to the book by the gorgeous cover. Venice is my favourite city - it is the most fabulous and romantic place to visit. The tale is beautifully descriptive and the imagery is wonderful. I liked the style of writing.

However, I thought the plot was implausible and the love story was too sugary for my tastes. There is a hint of intrigue but the end reveal I found unbelievable. I also thought it was a little drawn out and some of the characters could have been more developed.

All in all, The Echoes of Love is a truly romantic, passionate and picturesque fairy tale which would appeal to those readers who enjoy pure escapism.

My thanks to Netgalley for sending me a copy of the Ebook to read and review. ( )