The Venetian Contract by Marina Fiorato - Review

Date Finished: 15 March 2013

Rating: 5*

Read the Goodreads description here 

Excuse me while I fangirl for a moment...

This book was absolutely beautiful. I don't usually manage to finish Historical Fiction novels, because they always seem to have the same storyline and outcome, and after a while my (extremely short) attention span gets in the way, and I end up doing ANYTHING except actually reading. But for some reason, I couldn't put The Venetian Contract down.

I don't know why. Really I don't. It didn't have vampires, or werewolves, or sexy aliens (yes, I am still hooked on the Lux series, don't judge me). It didn't have a hot hero to drool over. It didn't have a mystery woven into the story. Hell, it wasn't even set in this time period. But what it DID have was the Black Death (aka Bubonic Plague, Black Plague, or even just The Plague)... And Venice. Now that I think about it, that was probably the reason for my absolute obsession with this book.

If you've read any of my other reviews of Historical Fiction novels (read my review for Blood Red, Snow White here: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...), or anything to do with History, you'll probably have noticed that I am a bit of a History nerd. Okay, a LOT of a History nerd. History-obsessed-psychopath-who's-constantly-preoccupied-with-the-middle-ages is probably the most correct term. And I love Venice. Probably because I've been there, so throughout the book, my friends, family and teachers had to deal with me shouting out: "I WAS THERE! SEE? READ THIS PARAGRAPH. YOU KNOW THAT PLACE? I WAS THERE!!" Yup, I am just that cool. So that was DEFINITELY the reason I loved it so much. 

But really. Even if I wasn't totally obsessed with the Black Death, I would have loved this book. Sure, you sort of have to like History to be able to read Historic novels, so I wouldn't recommend this to anybody who hates anything to do with the past. Or people like some of my friends who just respond with, "Yeah, whatever. Guess what rock that is?" when I try to tell them about my latest Historical obsession (Geography nerds...). But The Venetian Contract was seriously one of the best books I have read in the past few years. And even though I absolutely love my vampires and werewolves, aliens and fairies, it was really nice to find a book to read that didn't have anything to do with supernatural beings in it. 

Adding to the fact that this book was amazing because of the History behind it as well as in it, the writing was exceptional. I had to mentally prepare myself to come back into this world every time I wanted to put it down. I also loved the way that the story was told from the perspective of a Turk, and not a Venetian. It made the novel just that much more interesting. 

So to all my fellow History nerds out there, READ THIS BOOK. Seriously. You won't regret it.