Playing with Fire by Tess GerritsenMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Playing with Fire by Tess Gerritsen is her newest standalone novel.
The plot is quite unique alternating between past and present times and in some way the story reminded me of one of my favorite books, Letters from the Lost by Iona Grey, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...
The story opens with violinist Julia Ansdell purchasing an old music book from an antique shop in Rome. Inside the book, she discovers a loose sheet of paper that has a handwritten waltz by someone named L. Todesco.
Returning home to her family, she finds things happening in her life that she cannot explain…..and it all begins when she first plays the waltz on her violin. A series of events that affect her husband and her young daughter, has her travelling back to Italy – this time Venice, the place where she believes the Jewish waltz composer Lorenzo Todesco had lived.
The flashbacks to Lorenzo’s sad and tragic story are incredibly poignant. The moving love story between him and Laura Balboni, a Catholic and a musician like him is incredibly heartbreaking. We see how the anti-Semitic laws that faced the Italian Jews during the 2nd World War – the horror and
cruelty that people endured during that dark time.
Mystery, history, drama, sadness, suspense…so many elements in this story.
I thought the ending a bit rushed in some way and also the revelations somewhat implausible for me.
Well-written, well-paced story but I don’t think this is one of the books I will reread again.
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