The Grey Beginning

Very modern gothic. The atmosphere was perfect: the isolated villa near Firenze, the hostile servants, the tragic little kid. But this is Barbara Michaels, so all this oppressiveness was tempered with touches of humour, like Pietro's preocupation with American football and the character of David. It worked perfectly.I loved that it took me a long time to be sure of what exactly was happening, though I had some ideas almost from the first. The important thing was that Kathy was perfectly justified in not realizing what was going on; too often the heroine in a gothic comes across as stupid for not noticing things. Not her. The what exactly was going on was a bit jarring and not completely believable, so this wasn't perfect. Other than that, an excellent example of the genre.

This book focuses on the life of Kathy Morandini, after her death of her husband, Bart. It goes through the challenges and surprises she encounters while trying to cope with her husband's death. In the mean time, she tries to find closure with her husband's old-fashioned Italian family. Primarily, with the Contessa Morandini, Bart's grandmother, who never met the girl with whom Bart spent his last days. Their first meeting ended up with the idea that Kathy was pregnant with Bart's child, a lie which kept her alive. Instead, what Kathy does get out of it is a child branded with madness, a couple of possible new love interests, and the spook of a lifetime. The Italian countryside, where the Morandini villa was located, proved to be a haunting place full of lies, death, treachery, and disgrace, and Kathy was caught in the middle of it all.Barbara Michaels used an interesting and subtle way to add romance with suspense into her novel. She created a setting for a Nancy Drew mixed with Stephen King suspense elements in The Grey Beginning. I liked the easy-to-read writing that was used for a better understanding of the context and the many surprises that were added which made me not want to put the book down. This book was written to throw the reader off into a game of guessing where everyone was an actor in this mystery. The clues that were dropped, threw my guesses off track and made me more caught up in the novel. I started to read this book thinking it would just be a story about the memories recollected by a young widow haunted by her husband's death. But because of Barbara Michaels captivating writing skills, this book was far from what I expected it to be. Instead, it was an intriguing look into the dangers of love and hate, faith and betrayal.I recommend this novel to those who like page-turners full of romance embedded with a mix of thrill and mystery. It was an attention-grabber and I hope everyone will enjoy The Grey Beginning as I did.

Not one of my favorites by Ms. Michaels, but it was written with her familiar style which I like very much.