TLC Book Tours: The Visitant

Author: Megan Chance
Title: The Visitant
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Publish Date: Sept 22, 2015
Buy: Amazon

Review Copy Provided By: TLC Book Tours
Book Blurb: 

A crumbling palazzo in nineteenth-century Venice holds a buried secret.

After she nearly ruins her family with a terrible misstep, Elena Spira is sent to Venice to escape disgrace and to atone by caring for the ailing Samuel Farber. But the crumbling and decaying Ca’ Basilio palazzo, where Samuel is ensconced, holds tragic secrets, and little does Elena know how profoundly they will impact her. Soon she begins to sense that she is being watched by something. And when Samuel begins to have hallucinations that make him violent and unpredictable, she can’t deny she’s in mortal danger.

Then impoverished nobleman Nero Basilio, Samuel’s closest friend and the owner of the palazzo, arrives. Elena finds herself entangled with both men in a world where the past seeps into the present and nothing is as it seems. As Elena struggles to discover the haunting truth before it destroys her, a dark force seems to hold Samuel and the Basilio in thrall—is it madness, or something more sinister?

Review: I'm not sure what to say about this novel, except that it reminded me so much of the gothic novels that I devoured when I was in high school. (Yup I always read my mom's old Candlelight Gothic Romances and I'm not ashamed to admit it)

The plot of The Visitant is much like the plots of those old gothics that I loved, but there's nothing retro about the book.  This book leaves out the cheesiness that those books have.

Elena is acting as a nurse to Samuel who is an epileptic that just happened to get injured in Rome and needs more care as his condition worsens.

Elena has a scandal in her past that has sent her away from her family. When that secret is revealed, about midway through the book, you'll really want to bop her in the noggin, and probably her family too.

Many times while reading I had to remind myself that she couldn't just pick up a phone to consult her father on Samuel's condition, and I found myself frustrated that she didn't write for help when things started to become more strange, for a lack of a better word.

There was a lot of strangeness going on, from the Nero's family and staff, both of which are a little bit out there, to the story of the ghost, and the effect it seems to have on one of the characters.

I really loved the triangle between Nero and Samuel. Though I couldn't figure out why Elena felt so strongly for Nero.

The one thing I couldn't understand was the ghost aspect which seemed to take a back burner until the end and even then it didn't come to a satisfying closure.

The ending too was baffling. I wanted something more defined.

 A truly satisfy darker read. Highly recommeded!

Rating: 4 flowers