All things Venetian

Palazzo:A Novel  by Danielle Steel    

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Switching between Rome, Venice and Paris, this tale depicts the struggles of three siblings to survive in the mad rush of haute couture life.

Cosimo, her brother Luc and sister Allegro inherit the family run Italian business, Saverio leathers making handbags for the elite. Unfortunately their parents were killed and younger sister Allegro injured in an horrific boating accident. Cosimo at once took over the running of the family business. Her driving ambition is to look after her siblings and maintain the stands of her Saverio heritage. A beautiful woman, but it’s her inner beauty that makes her glow.

Luc becomes a high rolling, shallow playboy, wanting nothing to do with the business except to be given money to indulge his life style and gambling habit. His petulance and entitlement attitude says it all.

Allegra, left in a wheelchair after the accident, is absolutely lovely and a talented designer just itching to fly. She faces life head on, enjoying all it can offer her. Her disability doesn’t define her.

Oliver Bayard runs a middle range handbag business out of Paris. He has two sons. Max who is somewhat like Luc, and Basile a street artist of some renown. Oliver’s always admired Saverio handbags. He meets Cosimo at a party given by the rich Texans who’d rented the Savario Palazzo. That will only be the first crossover of others in their lives as the plot develops.

A second chance romance, a crumbling family palazzo in Venice, and the breeze of change blowing through Cosimo’s world of haute couture design bringing disaster and triumph.

A fairly predictable and comfortable read incorporated into an entrancing world of glamour, belying the hard and delicate balance of work and economics, of risk and chance.

A look at family dynamics, love and jealousies, universally experienced and understood.

A Random House-Ballantine  ARC via NetGalley.