I can't even tell you what this book is about because there are so many story lines and nothing matched the back cover. I can tell you there are a lot of issues with this book.
1. It is pretty evident from the first 2 pages that the author was a man trying to write from a young woman's perspective. Nothing she said or the way she described was natural, it was all so strange.
2. The constant change of perspectives is so confusing. This book took forever to read even though it was in size 16 font because I kept having to reread page after page. I had no idea who was talking half the time.
3. I got excited when she got to the convent because I thought there would be a great story line with the book. But no, that disappeared and then it was about Sandro and then selling the book and then Tony and then her. I skimmed the last half and can tell I didn't miss much.

I would not recommend this to anyone. The cover and the back summary catch your attention, but they were created for another book because it was completely irrelevant to this story.

Mr. Hellenga did an impressive job incorporating words and phrases in other languages and giving enough context to get the meaning of the sentence without knowing the language and without saying, "which means"... I think this is an impressive skill and seems like it would be difficult to do well.

I was also impressed with Mr. Hellenga's ability to narrate from the point of view of a young lady.

Overall a great story well told.

I loved this book. Hellenga's characters are so real. I love when I hear myself saying "no, don't" or "go for it" to a character of print. It tells me that the author has done the job - brought me right there into the story. I only gave a four because I found the end a little wanting. A book this intense should have a powerful ending and I don't think it did. Still a great book.

A mess of a book. The first chapter was adapted from a short story written by the author and it shows. The connection to the rest of the book is very thin. I disliked Margot and her unconcern for her family and willingness to drift along with whatever came her way. I learned about the flooding of the Arno and about book restoration, but it was not worth reading the balance of the book to get that information.

Bookbinding + Italy = LOVE, right??? Anyone who knows me would recommend this book--and many did. I hated this book from the beginning and forced myself to read it. I had a professor in college that made quite the impression on me and she gave us one exercise in which she had us read excerpts of certain authors. It was then our job to assign a gender based upon this tidbit. It was fascinating to see if we could indeed do that! This book is an example of a man writing for a feminine protagonist with devastating results. He has no business writing as a woman. Not at all convincing and quite frankly, pathetic. I renamed this book, the Sixteen Agonies.

Needing a change and some adventure in her life, Margot Harrington felt a calling to travel to Florence in 1966 to aid in the restoration of art and books after the famous flood. Many foreigners arrived in the city, but Margot was a little removed from the other “Mud Angels” because she was an experienced antique book restorer and she was very familiar with Florence, having lived there for several years as a child. Circumstance leads her to end up living at and working in the library of an impoverished abbey. The nuns entrusted to help her rescue the waterlogged books come across an old prayer book, but this was no ordinary prayer book. This book is bound together with another small book – the banned (thought lost) erotic poems of Aretino.

Margot first lovingly restores the book and then entrusted by the, surprisingly worldly, Abbess attempts to sell the volume to help the abbey. Her lover tries to undermine her sale to make a profit for himself. The Abbot, to whom the Abbess reports, forbids her to sell the banned book and life itself seems to be throwing out roadblocks every step of Margot’s way. Never one to be daunted, Margot persists with her quest leading to some interesting adventures.

From the title of the book and the “blurb” I read describing it I expected this book to be an “erotic” adventure. And, in a small way it was, but it was mostly about Margot finding herself. I enjoyed the story but as so often happens in works of historical fiction, I enjoyed the descriptions of Florence, the flood and the restorations even more, particularly the book restorations and the “peeling” of the water damaged frescoes.

Hellenga knows a lot about Florence but he writes likes a man, not a woman.

For starters, the Kindle version needs someone to give it a solid proof read. It was confusing at times to try to figure out what was happening since, it appears, moments were accidentally edited out and you had to try to guess at what happened. Secondly, the story had no real structure… no build between the beginning, middle and end. When I got to the final page, I was surprised. How could that have been the ending? This is a great primer on Florence history, which was nice, but went way too long about the nuances of book-binding, without letting the reader know what was important to truly follow. For a book about Sixteen Pleasures, it was decidedly not sexy. This is amazing since the female protagonist had multiple relations with men, none of which seemed convincing. It felt like a man trying to write from a female perspective, but just not getting it.

This book is was picked up on a whim and it really drew me in right away. I enjoyed the attention to detail, the writing style and the accuracy in art and book restoration. But around halfway through it really lost me. This journey felt disjointed by the end. What was sold on the back cover, wasn’t really what you get.

I wish there was a more satisfying second half of the book but it just felt like more and more disappointments or listlessness while she tried to get rid of the book. And even when it was gone, there wasn’t really anything noteworthy…

Lekker romantisch.

This book isn't bad, just too boring to force myself to finish it. In the spirit of not wasting time on mediocre books I have to move on. There are some interesting parts about bookbinding and conservation but the reviews were definitely over-selling.

Margot is a young American woman working to help preserve priceless works after a catastrophic flood in Florence. She stays in a convent where the abbess asks her to help sell a forbidden erotic but priceless manuscript in order to save her convent without knowledge by the bishop. Margot works to help them while falling into a relationship with an older Italian man trying to save frescoes. The affair along with her journey away from home helps her come of age and gain a sense of her own identity.

Thoroughly enchanting read. A book I kept going to, couldn't put down. Would have rated it higher had I liked the ending better. Not that I need bows, I actually prefer not to have a tidy ending, but it was a letdown, unsatisfactory. Sensible, in keeping with the characters. But... .