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Maddalena and the Dark by Julia Fine EPUB
A Best Book of Summer (Chicago Tribune, Vanity Fair, LitHub, BookRiot, Publishers Weekly)
A Most Anticipated Book (Salon, LitHub, Bustle, CrimeReads, Chicago Magazine, Autostraddle, Polygon, LGBTQ Reads, Gizmodo)
For fans of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue and Mexican Gothic, a novel set in 18th-century Venice at a prestigious music school, about two girls drawn together by a dangerous wager
“A sumptuous feast of a novel, rich and strange and heady. Julia Fine is an extraordinary writer.” —Kelly Link, bestselling author of Get In Trouble
Venice, 1717. Fifteen-year-old Luisa has only wanted one thing: to be the best at violin. As a student at the Ospedale della Pietà, she hopes to join the highest ranks of its illustrious girls’ orchestra and become a protégé of the great Antonio Vivaldi. Luisa is good at violin, but she is not the best. She has peers, but she does not have friends. Until Maddalena.
After a scandal threatens her noble family’s reputation, Maddalena is sent to the Pietà to preserve her marriage prospects. When she meets Luisa, Maddalena feels the stirrings of a friendship unlike anything she has known. But Maddalena has a secret: she has hatched a dangerous plot to rescue her future her own way. When she invites Luisa into her plans, promising to make her dreams come true, Luisa doesn’t hesitate. But every wager has its price, and as the girls are drawn into the decadent world outside the Pietà’s walls, they must decide what it is they truly want—and what they will do to pay for it.
Lush and heady, swirling with music and magic, Maddalena and the Dark is a Venetian fairytale about the friendship between two girls and the boundless desire that will set them free, if it doesn’t consume them first.
⭐“Fine beguiles with this decadent tale of desire set in 18th-century Venice … A masterly exploration of the shifting power dynamics of the protagonists’ relationship, particularly as Maddalena’s devotion to Luisa curdles into obsession. With the alluring Venice backdrop, this will frighten and captivate in equal measure.”―Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Absorbing and necessary … Velvet-rich, thick with scrumptious detail, the novel is set in 1717 Venice where two young girls, music students from unlikely and very different circumstances, find each other and find love.”―Salon
“A slow-burn gothic novel … This is the kind of book that will make you lose track of your surroundings as you sink into its enchanted salt marshes… Maddalena and the Dark is an atmospheric banger of a novel.”―LitHub
“To say it reminds you of Black Swan is to say it captures a visceral, obsessive friendship between two young women in the throes of creating art. In this case, Fine paints 18th-century Venice, and the passions of Vivaldi’s prodigies, while making room for a gothic romance about a feverish adolescence.”―Chicago Tribune
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