One of the best things about reading Diva was the ability to look up images to round out the stories on the page. What was the "pajama" like outfit that Callas donned when in a hurry to debark the Christina with Ari's (then) wife Tina and Sarah Churchill? You can look it up and see her in all her flowery glory. I looked up a phrase from Tosca and by chance stumbled upon a clip of the very aria from Covent Garden in 1964 being described. Maria and Marilyn? The three-stranded diamond necklace? All these can be found, and Callas is just stunning.

Diva was dishy - Callas did live in the same world as Capote's Swans. It was fascinating to read about this period of international high society from another perspective, with the same characters like the Windsors, Agnellis, and Radziwills. Sympathetic to Callas and her struggles as a young girl during the war, her reputation as a hard-to-work-with prima donna, and of course the betrayal by Onassis, Diva compels the reader to care. Goodwin takes liberties as the conversations are intimate and a little contrived, but I was here for the ride and rooting for Callas.

My thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC.

I was really excited to read this book and I wanted to love it, but the characters were not for me. It was well written, but I found that I wasn't rooting for any of the characters. With that being said, I felt like I was immersed in each setting, from a large yacht sailing through the Greek isles, to backstage at an opera house, the description was amazing. Like I said the writing was good, but the characters were not for me.

Emotional and Divine!

What I loved about this book:
1. I love Daisy Goodwin and how she writes stories about famous people - they come to life in her hands. (I didn't know much about Maria Callas until I read this book).
2. Was a fast paced book!
3. We got a glimpse behind the curtain of these wealthy and in many cases troubled people.

What I wished was different:
1. I wanted to have the "rest of the story" and didn't like where the story ended.



Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the opportunity to read and review the book!

I loved meeting Maria Callas and following her story. I was hooked from the beginning in wanting to know what happened and why. It took me awhile to read the book as I thought there was a fair amount of fluff that wasn't needed. Overall I would recommend the book to others, but I would give them a warning that it is a bit long.

I found this historical novel about Maria Callas fascinating. As always, Goodwin does a wonderful job of bringing real people to life and the drama of Maria''s relationship with Aristotle Onassis kept me turning the pages long after I should have gone to sleep!

Thanks to St. Martin's for the copy to review.

Many years ago I was fortunate to have seen the Play “Master Class” starring Zoe Caldwell as Maria Callas. It was a story of a great opera diva teaching voice to several students while reminiscing about her life. It was a fascinating and extraordinarily well acted play winning several of the actors Tony awards. It was a superb and mostly factual expose of Callas’ life.

Daisy Goodwin has done a admirable job exploring Callas’ life going into detail about her character, her difficulties, her betrayals and her dedication to her instrument and her insistence on performance perfection. Goodwin has paid attention to detail while informing the reader about the politics that the performers of the opera world face from the Managers of the great opera houses, their contemporaries and fellow performers. Any story about Maria Callas has to include her relationship with Aristotle Onassis and Goodwin manages to incorporate amazing sensuality while describing an intricate cat and mouse relationship.

For those who love opera there is always a favorite soprano. It might be Callas, Tebaldi, Peters, Sutherland, Fleming or so many others, but no matter who you favor no one will ever be able to minimize or marginalize the greatness of Maria Callas. I remember a sequence in the play where Caldwell playing Callas berates one of the students for not projecting and reaching for those unreachable notes and the student lashing out saying that she wasn’t willing to sacrifice her voice, her career for a note - and that, whether you liked her voice or not, was what made Callas so great - she always reached for that note.

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this book and thank St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for a copy.

I have to admit that I had no idea who Maria Callas was before reading this book. I don’t listen to opera and don’t know anything about it’s history. The author did not give any glimpse into the why or how she researched the book, so I don’t know how true it was or how close the fictional events stick to the actual events.

With that in mind, I read it more as a fictional book, based loosely on events that happened in real life. It is very much character driven and we dive deep into Maria Callas and her relationship with Aristotle Onassis.

Maria is presented as a very complex woman. A Diva to many, adored and hated, yet she doesn’t end up with the one man she loves more than anything.

When historical fiction puts so much emphasis on characters and dialogue to present the story, it makes it hard to know what really happened. Did he really say those awful things to her? Was she really so easy for him to control? It raised more questions than it answered for me, yet I still found the story interesting.

This is a fictional story of a great affair between the world's greatest opera singer Maria Callas and the world's richest man until he leaves to marry Jackie Kennedy.
Maria was a diva, but she was also a strong intelligent woman who reached greatness with her gift of singing. Reading this book brought her to life and it was an irresistible page turner for me! Thank you, Daisy Goodwin, for bringing her to life and giving me a peek into this incredible woman's life. Thank you, Net Galley, for the opportunity to read this book for an honest review.

I wanted to love this, since Godwin’s The American Heiress is one of my all time favorite books, but it fell completely flat for me. The writing felt so awkward and stilted and I never was able to really get a feel for Maria Callas as a character. Maybe if I had known anything about her and/or opera going in it would have been more effective, but for someone who knows nothing about that world, it just felt like a bunch of name-dropping. Speaking of names, the constant switching of names for the same characters was also extremely confusing and really took me out of the story in the beginning. I do think that fans of Maria Callas and the opera may enjoy this more than I did as there is a lot of detail about opera, but overall this was a mediocre book for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the review copy.

I had never heard of Maria Callas and after reading ‘Diva’, I won’t soon forget her.

Although I enjoyed the “drama” of this book, Maria really had a sad life. My heart really ached for her during her fearful moments of what seemed like hysteria with thoughts of losing her voice, her relationship (or lack there of) with her family, and her tumultuous romance with Aristotle Onassis.

The novel was well written, but I wish we had learned more about Maria’s contributions to the operatic world.

Daisy Goodwin has delivered a completely un-put-downable novel in, "Diva." The life of Maria Callas could easily have been the plotline to one of the many operas she performed. A bright, talented young woman who built her career from the ground up after coming of age in the turmoil and poverty of World War II, only to become the greatest and most celebrated opera singer of her generation. Maria lived for her art, but as her fame grew so did the width of the social circles in which she traveled and she found herself rubbing elbows with the rich and famous of the day. None were more rich, or more widely known than her fellow Greek, Aristotle Onassis.

Trapped in a marriage of convenience, Aristotle Onassis was everything that Maria had never had in a lover. and so she embarked on a years-long affair with the man that lasted until his marriage to Jackie Kennedy. The turmoil of her relationship with Ari brought pain and suffering to her performance which made many of these performances the best of her career. The struggle she faced on stage could not compare, however, to the anxiety and depression that she faced offstage with the ups and downs of their affair.

An intimate and moving portrait of a complicated and complex woman, "Diva" is a must-read for fans of the historical fiction genre. A wonderful choice for book clubs looking for a title that will have a broad appeal to readers of different genres, "Diva" is an early contender for best of the year. Faithful readers of Kristin Hannah, Kate Quinn, and Kristin Harmel might just find a new favorite in Daisy Goodwin. Special thanks to NetGalley and to St. Martin's Press for an Advanced Readers Copy of "Diva" in exchange for an unbiased review!

Before this read, I had heard the voice of Maria Callas, but not in context and never in English, so wouldn't have been able to identify it if asked to do so. . .I'd heard her name, knew she had a reputation for being a difficult person, and that's about it.

Daisy Goodwin's reimagining of the life of Maria Callas provides an opportunity to learn more about the world she was born into, the family who helped her (or didn't), friends who were true (or weren't), and her experiences as she walked the Diva Path with her Voice. The read wasn't altogether a pleasant one, as the characters - all - were not trustable, likeable people. I'll grant you that the world they lived in was certainly pitiless and cruel, and no one was altruistically trying to create a nicer world for others in this story.

The abrupt ending didn't prevent me from developing a silky sympathy for this woman who worked hard, fought hard and won during her beautiful years and appreciating the brief report of her fading lonely years. Once finished with the read, modern technology helped me find her images, videos and voice, which truly did reduce me to tears. For that, I am grateful - in-person connection through shows must have been a deeply moving experience if she can affect me so far from her time amongst mortals.

*A sincere thank you to Daisy Goodwin, St. Martin's Press, Macmillan Audio and NetGalley for an ARC to read and independently review.*

Both Marie Callas and Aristotle Onassis encountered early hardships. Coupled with their extraordinary talents in their own domains, they were powerfully motivated to extraordinary success.

Neither of these characters, as fictionalized by Daisy Goodwin, are particularly likable people. They jettison long term relationships with seemingly callous disregard. But their world-changing accomplishments make for a fascinating read. I learned some interesting information about Greek modern history along the way.

At times I found the book's pace too slow, but overall it was an interesting read.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Daisy Goodwin writes historical fiction in an easy to read and entertaining way. I learned a lot about Maria Callas' life and enjoyed the gossipy tidbits that included Jackie Onassis, Lee Radziwill, and Princess Grace among others. It reads a little like a soap opera or gossip magazine, but overall I found it to be an enjoyable book.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for this ARC.

This was a very well written historical fiction novel about Maria Callas. I had honestly never heard of her, but have since looked up her music and she was a beautiful singer. She was absolutely a diva too because she was not very likeable in the book. If she was anything like that in real life, oh man. Her story was interesting though.

Utterly fascinating. It's hard to know which parts are true and which might be embellished, but I was sucked in immediately. I know nothing of opera. I know nothing of Marie Callas. I didn't know she had an affair with Aristotle Onassis and he refused to marry her and instead married Jackie Kennedy (which I did know about that marriage). Reading historical fiction really opens me up to learning new things. I find myself Googling images, backgrounds, etc. because I want to know more and see what these people look like. Marie Callas, though she was a great diva, was really just a hurt child and I ended up feeling badly for her. She accomplished great things in her field. She was a tough woman (on herself and on others). She would have been a hard person to like and probably much harder to love. All in all, this was a great read and I learned a lot.

"Diva" by Daisy Goodwin was an entertaining blend of fact and fiction regarding the life of world-famous opera star Maria Callas. Perhaps best know for her ITV/PBS creation of the show, "Victoria", Goodwin has made a career of blending fiction and biography of historical characters. I loved this intimate look at Callas, but always wondered at the line between artistic license and truth-telling; it's a strange thing as a reader to be wholly moved by passionate love or heartbreak and yet think - "did it happen like this?" Other readers may not have these reflections, but maybe due to the fact that Callas' life and fame is so recent that imagining the most intimate moments of people who are still known to many readers feels invasive and uncomfortable. Overall, a wonderful story but a great writer.

I wanted to read this book because I have read many books about Jackie, and needed to know more about Maria. What I have learned is that Maria was a beautiful woman with an extraordinary voice. She was a woman that married a man that completely wanted to be married to THE Maria Callas and not Maria. When she met Ari, she thought things would turn around, and maybe it did. I hate to spoil the book for you, but we all know he ended up married to Jackie. If you read this book you will see Jackie wasn’t the only woman in his life.

I did both the audio and the e book, and I do believe I preferred the audio as the narrator was outstanding!!!

Thank you to Net Galley for the ARC of DIVA in exchange for my honest review.

I was unfamiliar with Maria Callas prior to picking up this book. I am also not a fan of opera nor have I ever had the opportunity to attend an opera. Despite not having a connection to the main character or her profession, I was dazzled by Maria Callas and her enchanting life. I learned so much while reading this entertaining historical fiction account. Maria life tended to be rich in fashion/jewelry and experiences, including male relationships and traveling. She made for a wonderful main character whether biographical or fictitious. Her affair with Onasis made me compare this book to the Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post, as well as All My Children's Erica Kane.

Elsa Maxwell, the gossip columnist, Marilyn Monroe, as well as other prominent names, socialites and celebrities appealed to me because I am very interested in pop culture, Hollywood and A-listers. They worked for me as I am not an opera lover. If I was, I may have been disappointed by the book not focusing more seriously on Callas as a performer.

Ironically, shortly after finishing Diva, I binged Kate White's Bailey Weggin's series and crime reporter Bailey would listen to Maria Callas while driving and working on her cases. I'm so happy I had read Diva and was familiar with the opera singer.

I enjoyed being introduced to this self-made opera singer who led a complex life. I was fully aware this was historical fiction so I did online research afterwards to learn more about this person's actual life.

This book was so interesting and fun to read. I loved learning about Maria Callas and Onassis even if this isn't a true biography. All of the characters are described well and the story flows from Maria starting her career to what is possibly the end. I highly recommend it.