Nearly 300 books later and THIS is the WORST book of the year. I can't count the number of times I've ranted about it by now.
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0/5

THIS IS NOT A FANTASY BOOK. The Fantasy labels are VERY misleading. Zero fantastical elements, this is straight up historical fiction.

This was... fine, I guess? more infuriating every time I think of it.
I'm a primarily Fantasy reader. When I read the description I thought this would be much more interesting: betrayals, secrets, vengeance, sisterhood, maybe even a bit of magic.

Instead I got a book that was mostly about women who wished they were pregnant, who really wanted a baby, whose sole motivation was getting pregnant and having a baby. I can 0% relate to this. Especially because there was never a why any of them want a baby, we're just supposed to nod along that of course everyone wants a baby for no reason other than just wanting one. Women are meant to be mothers. Duh.

The characters felt very superficial and had thoughts and motivations that were poorly fleshed out. Most of the past women just wanted to kill men because they got cheated on once-- no passion, no details, no imagination; seems like a huge overreaction. There's one husband who we get into a little more and dude is SUCH a sociopath but it's entirely downplayed and just like 'we've grown apart and want different things' instead of looking at his super manipulative behaviour.

And the attempts to bridge the stories at the end felt tenuous at best and entirely overdone.

I think that the swapping back and forth between POV and timelines also dampened the story and made me realize just how disinterested I was in both storylines. It's astounding how utterly boring and lifeless it was given such a juicy and interesting premise.

Disappointed at all the hype surrounding this book and the terribly misleading marketing.

This book is written for the suburban white women who secretly think “I could’ve been a historian at Cambridge if I didn’t get married after college” the same way that suburban white men swear “I could’ve been a professional athlete if it weren’t for that college knee injury” (except even worse because marriage is generally entirely voluntary).

Shallow, melodramatic, and lacking in all subtlety, this is not much more than Emily in Paris but for those who fancy themselves closet intellectuals rather than would-be influencers, and above all, a complete waste of the Aqua Tofana story premise.