Note: Thank you to NetGalley, Bookouture, and Ella Carey for the advanced reader copy of the book. This review will also be posted on NetGalley. What follows is my unbiased review of the book.

This is the second book in author Ella Carey’s Daughters of Italy series. I haven’t read the first one, but apparently, this is a backstory for one of the characters who appeared in the first book. I don’t think it’s necessary to read that first book to pick up this one. I visited Venice a few years ago and really want to go back, which is what drew me to this book.

Evelina is a fairly young widow in Tuscany, Italy. Originally from Venice, she married a Count with a large estate. She loved Arturo a great deal but managed to pick herself up after his death and is managing their large estate and farm. Set in the middle of World War II, she is managing to keep things going and take care of the many women and children who live on the estate while their husbands are off to war, or already dead.

It’s 1943, and Italy is divided. The Allies are making a push through the country, trying to drive the Germans back north. The Italian government post-Mussolini signed an agreement with the Allies, but the Fascist Party was still in control in the North and was aligned with the Nazis. At the Congress of Verona in 1943, Jews were declared “enemy nationality.”

This is when Evelina receives a telegram from her closest friend, Talia, a Jew. Evelina and her father conspired to get Talia and her father, a doctor, out of the country earlier, and as far as she knew they had left. However, the telegram states that Talia didn’t leave and now needs Evelina’s help. The bonds of friendship speak to her, and she immediately leaves the estate in the care of her staff and heads to Venice.

In Venice, she confronts her parents’ political views, which have softened a bit since the last time they talked, and searches earnestly for Talia. A visit to her house finds it empty, except for a little boy hidden in the laundry chute. Evelina brings him back to her parent’s house and hides him, unaware that she’s already being followed by Nazis. She must find Talia and get her out of Venice before the Nazis do.

Early in the book, the only issue I had was time-jumps that seemed to happen without notice, and I wasn’t sure whether I was reading about Evelina now (1943) or back in the 1920s prior to her marriage. The book doesn’t section these apart which sometimes makes it difficult to follow. However, the story was suspenseful and I loved reading about Evelina’s escapades in war-torn Venice. There is a love interest, as well as other peripheral characters that enrich the story and are well-written.

The last part of the book let me down, though. I can’t write much about it without spoiling the book, but the ending left me unsatisfied. One of Evelina’s sons, Nico, is profiteering off the war by selling ammunition to the Nazis. He’s not particularly aligned with them, but he sees the opportunity to make money off of them so he goes along. Although Evelina blames herself for their estrangement after her husband’s death, Nico is not entirely trustworthy. Still, he is her son and she believes in him. This leads to a disaster at the end, which is seemingly glossed over.

Perhaps it would have been better with the knowledge of whatever was in the first book, but the ending totally lost me. Like in a disaster movie where the ending is supposed to be happy because millions have died, but the main characters survive, this seems to be the same. We’re supposed to ignore the toll on lives here because certain people survive. I can’t. It really let me down.

There are also a number of plotholes. Evelina has two sons, Nico and Raf. Raf is off fighting with the Allies and although he’s mentioned enough times during the story, we are left to assume he must have died in the war because nothing is said about him other than that. A secret stash of gasoline is mentioned for Evelina’s car when she drives from Tuscany to Venice, but her boat seems to have a never-ending supply. At one point, the boat is clearly left in one place and then somehow ends up back at her home.

The Venetian Daughter is not a bad book. I enjoyed most of it, and I think fans of historical fiction, particularly World War II fiction, will enjoy it. There’s also a lot about Venice and its history that I very much enjoyed. Although I was only there for a day, I could picture what it was like in many of the locations Evelina visits, and I have a few other places I’d like to check out on another trip. The ending let me down quite a bit, but I still enjoyed the book overall.