Tartlets, I was super excited when I saw the publication announcement for The Medici Curse by Daco S. Auffenorde. It promised Gothic suspense, missing family jewels, a potential family curse — and, it’s set in Italy. It all sounds so good.
Unfortunately, I added The Medici Curse to my DNF pile. Let’s talk about why.
What’s The Medici Curse about?
In The Medici Curse, Anna de’ Medici Rossi inherits her childhood home: an opulent Tuscan villa that she fled when she was twelve after her mother died there under mysterious circumstances. Anna’s homecoming isn’t exactly embraced by the locals, who believe that she murdered her mother and stole a very expensive and cursed family necklace off her dead body.
To top it all off, the sprawling villa is pretty darn creepy. Anna navigates spooky sounds, creepy visions, and family secrets as she tries to find out what really happened to her mother (and that necklace!) that fateful night.
Why I DNF’d The Medici Curse
The Medici Curse has a strong and interesting plot, but I don’t think the story itself is executed well.
The premise of why Anna’s ostracized — that a 12-year-old girl murdered her mother for a necklace — strikes me as pretty ridiculous. Like, I’m just not believing it, and I’m unsure why anyone else does, either. Yet, the premise sticks. It’s leaned on while setting up the story, and it just wasn’t working for me.
My other complaints about The Medici Curse are that there’s a lot of telling. Auffenorde has an awkward writing style. There are clumsy attempts to build tension that fizzle out. You can feel her trying to help the reader make the connections, but the dots never really seem to align and connect. The novel doesn’t contain much dialogue in the first few chapters, and when it does appear, it’s trite and repetitive. I mean, how many times do we have to hear how impressed people are that Anna speaks perfect Italian?
The 50 pages that I read of The Medici Curse felt like an unpolished draft. One that has potential but needs to be combed through with a red pen and a shrewd editor’s eye.
Should you read The Medici Curse?
The main reason I stopped reading The Medici Curse is because it triggered my “How is this published, and I’m not?” syndrome. Do you remember my DNF book review of My Magnolia Summer? The writing in this book gave me similar vibes.
But, you may really enjoy The Medici Curse if you’re “just a reader” and not a writer or aspiring author. A “regular” reader might not pick it apart like I did. I DNF’d the book after only 50 pages, so maybe it gets way better after that. Give it a try and let me know what you think.
Although I received a complimentary advance copy of The Medici Curse from Kaye Publicity, all opinions expressed in this review are my own. I was not compensated in any way for this review or for any other promotion/publicity I’ve done related to this book.
