I have quite enjoyed Julia Fine's other books - and I liked this one well enough, but I found it harder to get into than previous works of hers. It was quite loose as far as plot goes, and I would have liked a bit of a tighter plot, but I did enjoy the characters.

Thank you to NetGalley and Flatiron Books for the chance to read this book!

This paranormal about love, jealousy, treachery and revenge as evil misses the mark and begs the question: what is the point after all the description of Venice’s Ospedale della Pietà, home for foundlings and music school for girls studying under Italy’s famous composer, Antonio Vivaldi, the “red-haired priest.”

I really wanted to like 'Maddalena and the Dark' because I loved Fine's previous books. There is heavy world building and it started off very slow, once it started to pick up, it often circled back to a slow pace. Maddalena and Luisa are two teenagers who are sent to study music at the Pieta in Venice. As desires and envy weave it's way through these girls' lives, they make deals to get what they want. But every deal has a price.

I had to push myself through most of the book. It was quite laborious to read. Maddalena was very unlikable for me. She came across as selfish and manipulative. She had little to no consideration for others, and didn't care about the repercussions of her actions, as long as she got what she wanted. Luisa, I actually had high hopes for, but her naivety made her perfect for Maddalena to take advantage of. There was so many times I internally screamed at Luisa to back away while she still could.

I want so badly to talk about the 'relationships' and the ending, but I will not post any spoilers. Though Fine is a wonderful writer, 'Maddalena in the Dark' just wasn't for me.

Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with an e-ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This was one of my most anticipated reads of 2023. I’m not exactly sure what I expected but Vienna, music, mayhem? I’m in.

That being said, it fell a little flat for me. I really really enjoyed the first half of the book. The Pieta and building the atmosphere and the tension and the stakes for Maddalena were very interesting. I felt like the second half of the book I was reading about two different characters. Their motivations seemed incongruous with the characters we started with and had been following. Mainly Luisa.

I loved the intrigue. The music. The setting. I just wanted more of the world. I like dark academia but I do feel that many of the endings feel rushed/incomplete. So this is not an exception to that.

All in all I love Fine’s writing, a bit purple at times but quite enjoyable.

I would probably give this 3.5 stars.

Thank you to flatiron books for letting me read this early in exchange for a review.

This book was really frustrating to read. Nothing sets it apart from other dark academia novels about two best friends. The writing is literally nothing but world building and nothing about the characters. Really dissapointed

This book is about obsession and ambition, and what happens when those two at once collide then diverge in two young women. On paper it has a lot of things I should love - Venice, carnival, the Pieta (music school for girls where Vivaldi conducted), - and I did like those things. Through it all is dark magical realism tied to the city itself, and the political politics of the wealthy. For me though it took awhile to really get where the story was going, and it feels a bit overwritten. I could also feel the book trying to make Venice itself a character, and it just never quite got there. Overall a fun read, just fell short for me on some of the world building.

This was the sorry of two women, Maddelena and Louisa in Venice. This story wasn’t for me and I found it hard to care what happened.

I felt nothing for these characters other than a vague, distant, passing interest, and I think that's largely due to the combination of present tense and 3rd person omniscient (but distant) narrator. It felt like reading some scientist's observations of a new species, very detached. Just couldn't get immersed or invested in the story (which felt very meandering at times).

Also, not enough Vivaldi.

Thank you, Flatiron Books and NetGalley, for providing an eARC of this book. Opinions expressed here are solely my own.

A deliciously dark and delightfully eerie tale of friendship, music, love, and what's lurking in the water. Julia Fine has been the best advocate for her own work here: I was deeply intrigued when she called it her "Faustian Little Mermaid fever dream"; this novel does not disappoint.

I had a lot of trouble getting into this one. I didn't connect to either main character, I didn't connect to the writing style, and I thought the plot was a lot less engaging than it should've been for a story about a girl making cursed deals with a water entity. I think I probably was looking for more of a horror vibe, and this had a more traditional historical fiction vibe. Not bad, just not for me.

Maddalena and the Dark brings a friendship between two girls, and their yearnings, ambitions and self-discovery. They meet at a prestigious music school in Venice, 1717. The setting of Venice and the music school are fascinating part of this story, which is written with beautiful prose.

As the story alternates between the two girls, it doesn’t reveal much of their backstories. And this is something that helps me connect with the characters. Instead, the story propels forward, involving their situation in present time mostly.

This story is more of character driven, with girls trying to fulfil their plans and along the way learn more about themselves. The plot is lose. I wished there was more to the plot and character-development to make the story more engaging and the pace faster.

Source: ARC was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

The writing it absolutely beautiful. I was in love with the story, the subtlety of how these young women learn to understand each other, their music and how it defines them. It was all breathtaking-until the end. I'm not sure how I feel about the conclusion at all.

Spoilers:

I just can't digest it, the twist-what happens is so incredibly cruel. It paints Maddalena as unaware and unable to contend with the possibility of failure when she's already spent her years being treated as one. Her actions are so unjust and the motivation is difficult to believe. Jealousy? Heartbreak? She was so poised and beyond her years in the beginning but it all dissapears and that turns Luisa into a kind of shining victim.

I also feel very conflicted about the undertones regarding her as a queer character. She was a complex young person but then she just shifts to a caricature. She's heartbroken as a queer woman so she's going to murder her only love? I don't mind queer characters behaving in all different ways but this story specifically makes her attraction to the other woman as the cause for her villainry. It's not great.

I'll do the contrary as the author of this book did and get to the point without wasting words: To me, this was by far the most overwritten book of 2022, no question.

The prose is the purplest I've found since Catherine M. Valente, but without her or her experience. The author is so in love with pretty words and her own writing that she's forgotten the plot in favour of crafting the perfect line, that's usually so adorned that it outshone everything else and became distracting. It took me so long to understand what exactly "the dark" was here, because Fine can't write a clear sentence but goes around and around describing everything, always with pretty words and little content, and the way the two POVs, both girls, think and talk isn't either natural or plausible. Maddalena and Luisa talk the same at 15 as at 25, do not reflect their aging or evolving level of maturity on chapter 1 as in the epilogue, and you have to guess by yourself what's going on because the scenes shift from place and time within chapters and even within paragraphs. Also, the book is all written in present tense, first person present tense at that, which is one of the least liked POV styles around.

There's a valiant attempt made at conveying 1700s Venice, but honestly it doesn't quite feel like that because of how the setting gives off the impression of a tourist's eyeview. This is the Venice of a person who's gone there and name-drops the known locations you can find in any tourism guide and nothing else. All famous places, a few famous Venetians. It's even complete with inserts of Italian (and Latin) for "authenticity" that fall in the usual trope of immediately translating it for the reader . . . in the POV of the character that supposedly speaks Italian but somehow has to translate stuff into English.

Maddalena is alternately an annoying and forgettable character as well, Luisa is at least mildly interesting, but only because she's crazed. Their dysfunctional relationship is the highlight of this otherwise boringly overwritten story. It could've been a thrilling story about two girls growing up in Vivaldi's sphere and training with him, but so much is wasted in self-indulgent préciosité that the ending is rather a relief that you no longer have to keep reading these convoluted frilly paragraphs any longer. And speaking of the ending, I'm putting it in spoiler brackets, but that last scene read like a unwittingly hilarious rendition of that scene in "Goldeneye" where Xenia Onatopp is trying to fuck-kill Bond. No, seriously, the ending is meant to be read differently, but you'd think those two characters are shagging from the way Julia Fine wrote it.

(view spoiler)

Did I say overwrought and overwritten, did I not? Yeah, there's that as just an example. I'm sorry to say this was a complete miss in every sense.

I went into this book blind and I'm so glad I did. This book is a masterpiece both in its writing and uniqueness. Highly recommend for those who loved the lyrical beauty of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. This is one to bump to the top of your lists / piles,

Thank you, Flatiron Books, for allowing me to read Maddalena and the Dark early.

I obsessed about this book for a whole week after finishing it. It was THAT good.

Thank you to Macmillan and NetGalley for providing me with an e-ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I'm not quite sure what I was expecting from this book, but whatever expectations I had, they became suspended as I read through the story, because they didn't even matter. Julia Fine does an excellent job of crafting atmosphere, tension, and her characters. The backdrop of this novel was executed well; I truly felt as though I had been immersed in the world of 18th-century Venice. I also quite enjoyed the musical setting, as a musician myself--I've never read a book like this before and I'm glad that I have.

I hesitate to identify this book solely as a "dark academia" book because that term has become a buzzword that can reduce the value of a book to how well it matches a certain aesthetic. Yes, Maddalena and the Dark is dark academia, but it should not be reduced to those two words. This novel is, at its heart, a story of wanting--a story of the lengths we would go to obtain what we want, and is a cautionary tale in itself. It doesn't seek to teach or to preach, but rather to ask questions that may or may not have answers. Often in dark academia books, women are reduced to side characters or simply are not significant at all. Fine refutes this trope by giving voices to the girls of this book--who are alternately angry, hopeful, and naive, but always dimensional and believable.

One criticism I have with this book is Maddalena's actions toward the end, which seem out of character with her personality and even rushed, as though the author wanted to reach the ending quickly. I also see that on Goodreads the book is classified as being "queer" despite the queerness in this book being mostly subtle/subtext. It is, after all, a novel set in 18th-century Venice were queerness was, if not virtually nonexistent, then unspoken of (to clarify: there is no homophobia in this book, I am just seeking historical context).

Overall, this was a stunning and striking book that will stay with me for a long time. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys narratives with unlikable female protagonists, historical (and even some supernatural) elements, and moral and philosophical dilemmas.

My one issue is that this book sometimes comes across as more interested in seeming clever then actually BEING clever.

The setting, the prose, they were all very enticing in the first half of the book. I read on hoping to be given more context, for things to be less vague but I ended the book with not much knowledge of the fantasy elements in this book. All that was clear was the need to give the thing in the water what it wants. It was intriguing, the bargain and seeing Maddalena slowly succumb to it, page by page. This was gradual, the relationships between characters on the other hand were not. There was not much interaction between them before they were just seemingly super close and intimate in the next. I didn’t care much for the relationships, though they did play a big part in the story, as well as a big part of my indifference.

I complain a lot but I didn’t think this was terrible. I actually liked the ending, no matter how vague. I interpret it in such a way that each girl got what they wanted, in whatever twisted manner. I just wished for more context or explanation.