ARA Review by Khushi of The Girl Who Knew Da Vinci

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Khushi
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ARA Review by Khushi of The Girl Who Knew Da Vinci

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[Following is an OnlineBookClub.org ARA Review of the book, The Girl Who Knew Da Vinci.]
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3 out of 5 stars
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The Girl Who Knew Da Vinci is a fictional novel by author Belle Ami promising a memorable journey into the highly specific romantic thriller genre. However, the lingering feeling I was left with after finishing the book was that of befuddlement and frustration. This is because the quality of writing declines sharply as you progress from the first half to the second half of the book, and the story becomes very inconsistent, failing miserably in the latter part.

The two halves are polar opposites in terms of theme, dialogue, editing, pacing and plot- so much so that they give a feeling of having been written by completely different hands with different aims and ideas. While the first half of the book does read as a mysterious romance and builds up fairly well to what should have been a gripping story, its second half reads like a jaded erotica with only passing references to the suspense alluded to in the initial chapters.

Personally I am not a big fan of erotic fiction, but that is not the problem here. The trouble with this book is, that the two halves are so different in terms of quality as well as content that it remains neither an enjoyable romantic thriller nor a good erotic fiction, and ends up being an inconsistent, jumbled attempt.

The plot is interesting to begin with. The protagonist of the novel is art historian Angela Renatus, who on top of facing problems in her new job as an intern at a prestigious art gallery, is constantly haunted by life-like dreams involving Leonardo da Vinci, the people in his life, and a mysterious painting. While she is figuring out whether her dreams were just that, or have some deeper meaning, she is contacted by art detective Alex Caine. Angela has been recommended to Alex by a mutual acquaintance for help on a case. Alex has been commissioned by a financier to search for the same painting in order to clear the name of his uncle, a German soldier posted at Florence in World War II, who might have had some role to play in the discovery and possible loss of the painting- allegedly painted by the Maestro himself. The high monetary worth of a hitherto unknown painting by Leonardo da Vinci is another reason it is sought after by not only Alex and his financier, but another powerful individual in the art world, who might stop at nothing to claim the mysterious painting as his own. Angela and Alex team up to find the truth about the painting as well as the meaning behind Angela’s mysterious dreams, in which a past involving people long gone, seems to collide with her present, and which are somehow connected to the missing painting.

The premise thus has good potential. The dialogues, and the conversations in the first half are in general realistic. Ami makes a smooth transition between different scenes spread across different time periods and the element of visions and dreams of the past, have been integrated well with the story line set in the present.

The initial story is interspersed with part fiction-part truth discussions of the life and works of Leonardo da Vinci. One can see a connect between the descriptions in this book, and what is commonly known about Leonardo da Vinci’s life and his patronage by the Medici. This speaks of some level of research on the author’s part and makes for a moderately interesting read.

But soon the writing takes a turn for the worse.

From being a clear, intelligible suspense read with a hint of romance, it takes a sudden and definitive turn into the erotic genre. I am not talking about sensuality here, but random, aimless sexual content. Thus there are explicit sex scenes that follow each other in quick succession. There is no break, no purpose to the same.

The adult conversations of the protagonists in the first half make way for childish, tedious banter and clichéd, overtly descriptive lovemaking scenes. Even this is banal eroticism, with no originality of language or writing.

The author does describe different places in Italy and Italian food and cuisine in detail at several points here. The same may have had some merit in isolation, and could have been good in a travelogue or a light-hearted romance if used with moderation. But as such descriptive writing merely fills up spaces between indulgent, meaningless sex scenes and sexual conversations, it does not add any value to the story itself, and increases the general frustration one is feeling with the direction the story has taken.

There are numerous punctuation errors, most commonly the usage of a period instead of a comma or semi-colon. While such errors are very few in the first half, there are too many of them subsequently and affect the ease of reading.

The writing is jerky. There is frequent use of abrupt, out of place phrases and adjectives. Also strange is how in many places when one line of the dialogue makes an attempt at profundity, the immediately succeeding line relapses into flimsy banter. In other places, there is an effort to enhance the gravity of the writing by introduction of sudden background detail for the characters or random, tangential thought processes, but once again they negatively impact the story telling and seem odd and out of context.

The scenes and dialogues are repetitive and you feel like the same scene is being replayed in different settings. In fact, at one place, in successive scenes barely few pages apart, nearly identical dialogues were used. It confused me into thinking that I had probably lost track of where I had stopped reading earlier. But I was wrong.

I also noticed a few scenes that had inconsistency in setting. For instance a scene begins in a car and ends in a restaurant, with no clarifying note to account for the shift in setting. Such errors however are easily rectifiable with better editing and I am only mentioning them for the sake of comprehensiveness.

The major flaw is the content. The eroticism in the latter half of the book is forced, and the mystery and the plot almost completely lost. The only purpose you can see for such writing is filling up of the pages. The lack of clarity is striking because what started out as a romantic novel ended up as a hackneyed, unoriginal, monotonous erotica. At one point, through the thoughts of of one of the character’s there is an attempt to justify the excessive lovemaking, which sounded absurd on the face of it and did seem like an attempt by the author to convince herself of her own writing. The author fails to distinguish between romance and eroticism and consequently loses the essence of both. Thus the novel ends up being a mismatched blend of half-baked romance and a dull erotica.

She does bring the story to a decent conclusion in the last ten or so odd pages, returning briefly to the flair of the initial chapters, but it is too little and too late, and the end product is a tangled mess.

To conclude, The Girl Who Knew Da Vinci starts as a promising read, with a refreshingly original plot but fails to deliver. I am giving this book a liberal 3 out of 5 stars. I lingered between giving it a 2 or 3 but I am giving it 3 eventually, considering the clear writing in the first half with an engaging enough discussion of the life and times of da Vinci, and the unique premise of the novel. I hope her next book has better quality, and has more clarity and consistency. I am taking off one star for the casual use of punctuation and repetitive and abrupt use of words and phrases in many places that made for a disruptive read. I am taking another star off for a lack of clarity and focus in the second half, already discussed above, which made the book a tiresome and unsatisfactory read. This is also my major problem with the book.

As a final word, due to the explicit sexual content and occasional use of profanity, reader discretion is advised.

***
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