Well, it didn't take me long to read Carol Goodman's, The Sonnet Lover. It was a good story, written in the same style and similar plotting as her others. Always a female academic or academic/arts association, a mystery and a personal problem, intertwined, to be solved. Her protagonist, as usual, over-thinks things and dismisses her gut feelings, jumping to wrong conclusions which get her into jeopardy as she tries to untangle a mystery. I had the bad guy pegged early because her main characters in her books consistently and stubbornly refuse to consider certain persons even if there is evidence that that person is lying or otherwise shouldn't be trusted.
The story is set in New York and in a villa near Florence. The mystery is whether or not a certain woman is Shakespeare's "Dark Lady" to whom or for whom he wrote sonnets. Was she also a poet? Did any of her own sonnets survive although the legend is that she destroyed all before she was forced to seek asylum in a nunnery? There are hints that the sonnets were found by student who was planning on making a film about them and the Shakespeare/Dark Lady connection. The student supposedly commits suicide (yeah, right). The villa is to be the setting for the film, the home of the sonnets, and the current owner (who wants to bequeath the villa to the college in NY) is embroiled in a lawsuit over ownership. Oh, the love interests? Current - president of the college. Past - married Italian professor who she had an affair with 20 years before. So, after two murders and several attempted murders, our heroine finally figures it all out. The book ends in England where she is tracking down a possible site where Shakespear may have met his Dark Lady.
According to her book, Shakespeare wrote his sonnets primarily for or about this Dark Lady and some guy. It is not a story I have ever heard. I have not studied nor read his sonnets. I haven't looked into it yet, nor have I looked up the Uffizi she mentions several times. Right now, I am trying to type sitting on the floor because Oscar has commandeered my computer chair. Please excuse any typos I may have missed.
Oh, I've started her Arcadia Falls. We are back to teaching at a private academic arts school as a widow with a teenage daughter in tow this time. It also looks like we are back to a fairy tale connection. Only into it by two chapters so far.
As much as I like her writing, I think her main characters are becoming a bit too predictable.
