Archives for June 26, 2023

I voluntarily read an early copy of this book.

After her parents perish in a tragic accident, Cosima Saverio assumes leadership of her family’s haute couture Italian leather brand. While navigating the challenges of running a company at twenty-three, Cosima must also maintain the four-hundred-year-old family palazzo in Venice and care for her younger siblings: Allegra, who survived the tragedy that killed their parents with scars and a spinal injury, and Luca, who has a penchant for wild parties, pretty women, and poker tables.

Cosima navigates her personal and professional challenges with a wisdom beyond her years, but her success has come at a cost: Her needs are always secondary. She’s married to the business, and her free time is given to those who rely on her . . . until she meets Olivier Bayard, the founder of France’s most successful ready-to-wear handbag company. A brief conversation on her palazzo’s terrace turns into a tour of the Saverio workshop, and, fifteen years after her parents’ deaths, Cosima has found a confidant.

Now the business is financially stable and generating enough income for the Saverios to live comfortably. Then Luca loses a hefty sum at the casino, and his debt must be repaid with money or his life. Cosima, forced to bail him out, is given an impossible choice: List the palazzo, sell a third of the family business, or let Luca fend for himself. But is there another way to save everything she has fought for before it goes up in flames?

Even tragedy and hardship is entertaining when Danielle Steel pours on the emotion and angst in her latest spellbinder! I was hooked from the start to Cosima’s story and looked forward to more with each turning page. The secondary characters added warmth and drama to the storyline and kept the pace fast and filled with heart.

Cosima was a simple character who was easy to like and admire when presented with all that she had accomplished in her young life. When you added in her siblings to the mix, you got a feel for the pressure she deals with on a constant basis. A part of me wanted to have been in her character’s life since the start when she took over the business to live the ups and downs and pressures with her along with her relationships, but the aspect of where she was in life now was also entertaining.

I highly recommend this book to anyone that enjoys watching the inner dynamics of a powerful family as trauma and circumstance changes their daily life and exposes secrets and lies.