Luce Nardini travels to Italy to discover the truth about her mother’s family who she has had no contact with until she used social media to find her cousin. Mathilde is thrilled to reunite the family and Luce is excited to finally meet her grandmother. Her uncle Carlo is determined to shut her out but then the power of nature also tries to destroy the happy reunion…
The Lost Village is a family drama with historical secrets at its heart. Luce’s grandmother Clelia reveals the truth over the course of the novel, right up until the end. Her flashback sections are her telling her granddaughters the story of her life. The mystery of Carlo’s animosity towards Luce and her mother are only revealed in the final chapter.
Luce is dealing with her own conflicting emotions in the present day. She is divorcing Ethan and now has more time on her hands as her son Eli is grown up. There is the hint of a romance in Italy but events take over. I enjoyed, and could identify with, the scenario of Luce acting as a daughter and mother, being able to see both perspectives.
I was swept away in the mystery of the plot and the vivid descriptions of Italy in the past and present. The characters of Luce and Clelia are likeable and I found myself hoping for a happy ending for the family after years of separation. The actual ending was dramatic and heartbreaking, although perhaps a little unrealistic.
Overall, The Lost Village was an emotional story of love, loss and hope.
The Lost Village book description:
1945, Italy. Two sisters give birth to two little girls on the same night, huddled under blankets, deep in the black woods that surround the village of Bosconero. They hold their babies close as footsteps approach. If they make even the slightest sound, the German soldiers will find them…
2006. Luce Nardini searches the cobbled streets of a remote Italian village for a house with a faded blue door. Since her only child left home, and with her estranged husband more distant than ever, she’s been completely untethered. Discovering why her mother cut all contact with her family and the village she loved feels like Luce’s last hope at understanding who she is.
Inside the house, she’s relieved to find the grandmother she never knew living out her final days. With a longing look at an ornate wooden box on her nightstand, her grandmother is just beginning to tell the heart-wrenching story of a little village ravaged by war, and why Luce’s mother swore never to return, when then the unthinkable happens: an earth-shattering disaster that shakes the little village of Bosconero to its core.
Feeling more lost than ever before, Luce fears that the secrets of her past have been buried forever. Her only hope is to win back the trust of the small community and find her grandmother’s little wooden box amongst the rubble of the village.
But will the surprise arrival of the husband she thought she’d lost help sew Luce’s family back together, or tear it apart for good? And will anything have prepared her for the devastating betrayal she finds hidden inside the box…?
An unputdownable historical novel about the secrets we keep to protect the ones we love by the author of million-copy Amazon No 1. bestseller, Watch Over Me. Perfect for anyone who loves Fiona Valpy, Lily Graham or The Letter by Kathryn Hughes.
Author Bio:
Daniela Sacerdoti is the author of the bestselling Glen Avich series which has sold over one million copies in ebook to date, Sacerdoti’s debut novel Watch Over Me was named the eighth bestselling Kindle book of all time in 2015, when she was also ranked as the eleventh top-selling Kindle author. She lives in a small village in the middle of nowhere, with her Scottish husband, two children, a Cocker spaniel and a foundling kitten (who was definitely a witch in a past life).
