Hello Shiquers and welcome back to Nerdy Shique Universe! It is time for another book review! I know I was going to do the Cosmetic Controversy but I finished another book on my Net Galley list! Let’s see what I got!

Disclaimer: This review is based on opinions and observations of the lead writer. Please respect her thoughts and opinions of this book!

Title:The Girl from Venice
Author: Martin Cruz Smith

Synopsis: This book takes place towards the end of World War II and Venice is still has the Third Rike in their villages and cities making sure that no one gets into trouble until we meet the fisherman named Senzo who finds the body of a girl in the lagoon, which he finds out that she is alive in a lot of trouble.

Giulia, born to a wealthy Jewish family, escapes one night from being captured by Nazis and ends up being rescued by Senzo to ask him to help her in finding the person that betrayed her family the night they were taken. She not only gets the help that she asks for but ends being swept up in a lot more trouble than she asked for and even pulls Senzo into even more trouble that he doesn’t want.

Thoughts: This book was very exciting! I never thought I would see someone who was lying ina lagoon would be still alive when we know most crime dramas have people end up losing their lives in a situation like this. I tend to like World War II related stories even if they are fiction based, heck I am reading another one which the review will come up on here very soon, from Everyone Brave Is Forgiven, Number the Stars from when I was in elementary school, to this one!

This does paint the picture of what happens in Italy during the war since people were afraid of being bombed like Paris and London during the war and having people in hiding and keeping secrets do get shown throughout the book. I do like how Giulia did take on the disguise idea so she wouldn’t be found by cutting all her hair off to fool people that she was a man but some of the residents were able to see the disguise.

I do have one drawback from this book is that I felt the ending almost felt like Come Winter which there were good stopping points but kept going. I think some of the chapters could’ve been extended slightly because some of the chapters were shorter than most when more of the story could be added and couldn’t be thirty-seven or eight chapters long book. I did like the end since I did want Giulia and Senzo together throughout the book despite his promise to marry his younger brother’s widow since that was a bit of a custom at the time. I did like how he figured out what she was doing with her older brother time to time. He did have some of his hang ups with his deceased wife all thanks to a bomb that hit but he did get over it in the end. I did like the character Maria from the Argentian Consulate who at first forged paintings and met her husband through that and she vowed to stop forging but kept on doing it in other ways such as violins and government documents, which I see it as using it for the greater good and during the time of war you do become desperate and WWII was one of those desperate time periods.

Rating: 4.5 Star Pawprints out of 5! Reason being is that the story could’ve been shortened in some areas to extend some of the chapters that were extremely short. It was a really good story and it did use the history behind WWII very well in a fictional aspect. I can’t wait to see how the book I am reading takes another location into their story telling during WWII.

That is it for this review! You can get this book through Amazon and Barnes & Noble! So check it out while you can! Next post will definitely be my Cosmetic Controversy topic!