Salvioni’s passionately crafted novel highlights the friendship of two adolescent girls, the subjects of an attack on the banks of the Lambro in 1936, an incident they know no one will believe. Life under Mussolini and his Black Shirt cronies is explored through Francesca, an obedient Catholic girl who longs to shed uniforms and demonstrations and an unforgiving God. The leader of a small clique of outcasts is a bright-eyed, grubby, fearless slip of a girl nicknamed the Cursed One, because she lives under a cloud of suspicion, and bad things happen around her. When she catches Francesca spying, a friendship develops over some stolen cherries.

The ‘cursed’ Maddalena says girls must not fear blood, although Francesca isn’t sure why, so running barefoot across the rocks and taunting feral cats, and getting scratched and bitten into the bargain, is a rite of passage which Francesca welcomes with pure joy. In school, Francesca models demure behaviour, salutes Mussolini’s image, and obeys her teacher —futile capitulations which Maddalena finds she cannot stomach. Over a few politically volatile months, Francesca grows so enamoured of Maddalena that their friendship becomes the only reliable thing in her life, until it isn’t.

The author’s use of the ‘Cursed One’ throughout the novel keeps the town prejudices front and centre while drawing the reader deeper into Maddalena’s beguiling orbit along with Francesca. She’s all the more intrigued by the town’s suspicion of her companion, and finds inventive ways to spend time with the trio of scallywags at the river, wearing her bloody scars with pride. I found Salvioni’s novel to be an absorbing tale of coming-of-age and passing into womanhood, wherein the friends discover their inner strength through their support of each other, and the courage to defy male presumed-ownership of the female body. The conclusion feels all the more poignant for its open-ended simplicity.

If you like Elena Ferrante (which I do!), then you will love this book. It felt so similar but also a bit darker. It made me sad, full of despair and also so angry and yet, it felt so genuine in its emotion. Told through the eyes of Francesca on the cusp of war in Italy, this was so well written. I couldn't put it down! Give this one a try.

The Cursed Friend comes out TODAY on May 7, 2024, and you can purchase HERE!

They called her the Cursed One and nobody liked her.

Saying her name brought bad luck. She was a witch, one of those who can mark you with the scent of death. She had the devil inside, and I was never to talk to her. I would watch her from a distance on Sundays, when Mom made me wear the shoes that sliced my heels, clumpy stockings, and my best dress, which I had to take care not to soil. Sweat would drip down my neck and the constant chafing reddened my thighs.

The Cursed Friend is a coming-of-age historical fiction novel set in the pre-WWII era in Fascist Italy. A friendship develops between two girls that are as different as night and day. I felt the story was slow-moving. I couldn't connect to the two main characters, Francesca and Maddalena (known as The Cursed One). For me, this story was just ok. Thanks to author Beatrice Salvioni, HarperVia, and NetGalley. I received a complimentary copy of this ebook. The opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own.

The story follows friends that are very different, in fascist Italy in the late 1930s. Salvioni's writing style is easy to follow, perfect for casual reading sessions. The plot moves along swiftly, keeping readers engaged with its twists and turns.
However, the character development could be more robust, especially for the supporting characters, who sometimes feel flat.

Thank you, Netgalley and HarperVia, for the ARC!

The Cursed Friend" by Beatrice Salvioni is a novel that tells the story of a group of friends who become entangled in a series of mysterious events after one of them uncovers a cursed object. As they try to unravel the secrets behind the curse, they must confront their deepest fears and darkest secrets. With its blend of suspense, friendship, and supernatural elements, "The Cursed Friend" is a gripping read that keeps readers on the edge of their seats until the very end.

In 1930s Italy, Francesca is on the cusp of something—though of what, she's not yet sure. But by the time the book opens, she is helping to hide a waterlogged body by the edge of the river.

At the core of the story is a girl Francesca knows initially only as the Cursed One—a girl who, the locals say, was responsible for the death of her brother and the death of her father, a girl whose word or sometimes simply presence can bring about misfortune. Francesca is not so sure, and the more she gets to know the Cursed One the more she wonders whether the norms she thought were set in stone are correct. But this is not a time and place where dissent is encouraged, and the further Francesca strays from what is accepted, the closer she comes to tipping past the point of no return.

I read this largely because the description reminded me of "The Unbreakable Heart of Oliva Denaro". It ends up being more of a story about friendship, which I love—I always want more stories about platonic female friendship. Neither Francesca nor Maddalena (the titular cursed friend) was quite as richly characterized as I might have hoped, though Maddalena has a more complicated background—there are, for all that she is something of an outcast, perhaps as many bright spots in her life as in Francesca's.

The placement of the body is also interesting: it opens the story with a bang, at which point we drop back a year or so to see what led up to it—and for crucial details like "whose body are they hiding?" But part of me wished that the death (and circumstances around it) were able to serve as something to bind the girls together and propel them forward in their friendship rather than as something more climactic.

This is a translation from the Italian, so I'm not always sure whether I'd feel the same way with the original or whether something was lost in translation. Some things feel disconcertingly modern (e.g., a character saying "not gonna lie" (loc. 2556)), and the one needle-scratch thing I found—I'm not sure whether this was a translation choice or an editorial one—was the use of "Mom" and "Dad" rather than whatever a 1930s small-town Italian girl would have been using; "Mom" and "Dad" sound glaringly American and modern, and some creative use of the Google Books Ngram Viewer suggests that it is unlikely that even an American of the 1930s would have been calling her mother "Mom". I like to think that I'm an intelligent enough reader to understand that when a character refers to her "Ma" or her "Mamma" or whatever it would be for the time and place, she means the same thing that I do when I say "Mummy"!

I'd like to read more along these lines, though—dark, heavily anchored in time and place, focused on friendship rather than romance. If there's a book out there that has some version of Maddalena's sister Donatella's story, wherever it goes from here, I'd like to read it.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

Strong work very well done Translation that had some awesome motifs. Thanks so much for the ARC NetGalley!