I wanted to love this book. The blurb had such promise--parallel tales of Romeo and Juliet in the 14th century and in modern times, with a mystery and a happy ending--how could it miss?
Oh, Lord.
The gist of the contemporary story is this: Julie Jacobs/Giuletta Tolomei is cut out of her Great Aunt Rose's will, as in, "Gee, sweetie, you're not inheriting jack. I'm leaving it all to your sister, but that's OK because here are some vague clues to a treasure that may or may not exist and that your parents might have been murdered for. Or not. Anyway, shug, you're out of the will, but the treasure's ALL yours. Have a good one. KTHXBAI." This alleged treasure is located in Siena, Italy where Julie/Giuletta and her twin sister Janice/Gianozza were born. BTW, Janice has been Julie's nemesis for all of their lives, and there are many flashbacks to the diabolical Janice doing stuff like tangling the ribbons of Julie's new pointe shoes (oh woe), reading her diary out loud and/or making much fun of her. Mwhahahaha!!! Go Janice!
Anxious to escape the vile Janice and ignoring the thousands of dollars she owes Visa and Mastercard already, Julie hies off to Italy in search of this treasure that may or may not exist and if it does, may or may not be worth anything. Being young and dumb and all, Julie stumbles around Siena for a while but hooray! Not only does she find her mother's intact safety deposit box after 20 some odd years of nobody paying rent for it, she's befriended by a member of the local gentry who loans her a bunch of designer clothes and shoes, since the airline lost her luggage. In addition, this fairy godmother just happens to have a handsome relative/hanger-on named Alessandro, who is so ready to get married and settle down and how lucky is it that ol' Jules is right there? Please bear in mind that everybody's known each other for about ten minutes. The borrowed clothes inspire Julie to get a complete makeover, the ugly duckling becomes a beautiful swan and Alessandro is speechless with smittenness, overlooking Julie's incredible rudeness to everyone. Or maybe he's stupid. Or maybe the rudeness doesn't matter because they're not really her friends despite the ceremonial sharing of the clothes and shoes which just happen to fit, in which case it's convenient that Julie's godparents show up. Except they're not really much help.
Are you still with me? I promise I am not making this up. Take an aspirin if you need one, we're almost done.
Anyway, Julie gets bored with the hateyou/loveyou/hateyou/loveyou thing she's having with Alessandro, and gets serious about finding the treasure. She lands in some pretty big trouble (see young and dumb above). And then, woots! Janice shows up from across the world and not only saves the day, but expresses herself with some of the most bizarre language ever to come out of a straight character's mouth. But let's not be language snobs here. YAY for Janice and the twenty-five years of resentment and manipulation that turn out to be just a Big Misunderstanding! I knew it!
As if things can't get any weirder, Aunt Rose's faithful family retainer shows up and turns out to be... oh, never mind. This book is one hot mess of "If I had only knowns," non sequiturs, unaccountable incidents, inappropriate reactions and events manipulated to further the plot. It culminates in an eleventh hour rescue with no explanation of how such rescue came to take place. Julie/Giuletta finally gets her HEA after some fairly interminable explanations of plot points I'd quit caring about a hundred pages before, not to mention all the characters in two centuries who have the same names. It's exhausting.
What somewhat redeems Juliet is the 14th century tale. It's a hauntingly pure story, without being muddled by the 21st century Juliet's POV. If you're determined to read this book, my recommendation would be to skip the contemporary bits entirely. Ms. Fortier has a fine story-telling ability as evidenced in the historical tale, but should heed Strunk and White's advice to omit unnecessary words. A little common sense and some merciless editing would have been of great benefit to this book.
If only Juliet had been 250 pages, instead of 400 plus. There's so much padding and pointless embellishment, this reader gave up on trying to keep track of details that might become significant because there's SO MUCH STUFF in this book. Parts of it read like a travelogue (that's OK) and lots of it takes place inside Julie's head, which is a crazy-making place to be, given Julie's naivete, insecurities and awful judgment. Despite the promise of the complex plot, the rest of the contemporary characters never quite come to life, with one exception. I liked Janice once I got to know her, but I felt like I wasn't supposed to; see crazy-making, above. I can't help but think this would have been a much better book if the story had been told in the third person or better yet, from Janice's point of view.
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