Title: The Lost Girls of Rome
Author: Donato Carrisi
Category: Mystery
Published: November 19, 2013 by Mulholland Books (first published 2011)
Rating: 2½ out of 5 stars
Add: Goodreads
Purchase: Amazon | Audible | Book Depository
A grieving young widow, seeking answers to her husband’s death, becomes entangled in an investigation steeped in the darkest mysteries of Rome.
Sandra Vega, a forensic analyst with the Roman police department, mourns deeply for a marriage that ended too soon. A few months ago, in the dead of night, her husband, an up-and-coming journalist, plunged to his death at the top of a high-rise construction site. The police ruled it an accident. Sandra is convinced it was anything but.
Launching her own inquiries, Sandra finds herself on a dangerous trail, working the same case that she is convinced led to her husband’s murder. An investigation which is deeply entwined with a series of disappearances that has swept the city, and brings Sandra ever closer to a centuries-old secret society that will do anything to stay in the shadows.
I wanted to like The Lost Girls of Rome, I really did. The setting is fabulous and the author clearly knows, and loves, Rome. The characters are fascinating and a few are well-developed. But it was just too confusing, there’s too much going on and too many people. And it jumps between now and 5 years ago and yesterday and a year ago.
We’ve got Sandra, above, who is being led almost on a scavenger hunt through Rome to figure out what her now-dead husband had stumbled on. We’ve got a major Vatican secret, a few serial killers, a maybe priest, a maybe Interpol agent, a kidnapped girl, photos. They’re all good ingredients, but when you through them all in the pot you end up with mud soup. I kept reading, hoping that in the end it would be worth it. It wasn’t. The threads pulled together, but not in a way that satisfied me.
Reading other reviews, I have the minority opinion here. Maybe I’m just missing something, or expected more than I got. The writing is good and I felt like it could go somewhere. It could have been outstanding. Instead, it was disappointing.
It seems like I should have more to say about a book that was over 400 pages long, but I was lost most of the time.
I’m always disappointed too when a book doesn’t live up to my expectations. I can’t even imagine how confusing this one would be in the audio version.
I think the audio would have been impossible.
Sorry this didn’t live up to your expectations as given your first few sentences I had high hopes for it.
I hate being lost, that just makes me give up
That’s too bad you didn’t like this more.
0.0 Never mess with Rome…hahaha.
But sorry this didn’t really work for you. I LOATH being confused.
That’s too bad. The title and cover look so enticing.
Have you read Poison by Sara Poole? It sounds a little similar, with lots of Vatican secrets and the murder of the main character’s father. It’s one of my all time favorites.
No, I haven’t read it. Just read the blurb on Goodreads and added it to my to-read list. Thanks for the suggestion.
Can ANYONE explain this book to me?? Aside from the main plot, I got totally lost with the subplots…
Who did the 8yr old grow up to be??
Was the Interpol guy a priest/profiler??
WHat happened to Clemente
It’s been too long. I think I had bits figured out, but now I forget. To be honest, I don’t even remember who Clemente was. I do remember that the kid who stole identities grew up to be the guy who killed the priest and then stole his identity and “became” a priest because he didn’t have any memory. Does that make sense?