💜🌙 Graceless Heart 🌙💜

• Isabel Ibanez @isabelibanezbooks

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

If there’s one thing I love, it’s a historical romantic fantasy. In the vein of Wild Reverence or The Infernal Devices, the genre combines my two loves – reading and history. Graceless Heart absolutely won me over with its world full of art, feuding families and (less historically accurate) magic.

Ravenna Maffei is an innkeeper’s daughter in Volterra and sculptress living in a small village on the edge of Florence. When Ravenna’s insurgent brother is captured and scheduled for execution, she has no choice but to enter a sculpting competition, where, if she wins, she will be granted a boon. But when the judges, the infamous Luni family, whisk her away to their palazzo in Florence and force her to reveal a dangerous magical talent, she is caught between warring families, an angry pope and magic itself.

An explosive premise! I thought the magic system was so inventive and unique. I was content with this as a standalone (a very solid standalone fantasy, if you’re looking for one), but I think there’s so much more scope in the world, which takes talent from the author. To give the reader the sense of ‘more’, without actually showing them.

The only reason I’ve deducted a star is that I was never fully convinced by the romance. Saturnino is purposefully mercurial, but I thought he could occasionally be rather cruel to Ravenna. If the romance had been a tad more appealing, this would have been a five-star!

It inspired me to learn more about the period, about the Medici family, the real-life figure of Antonio Maffei, and the birth of corruption in Italy. It’s a truly fascinating (and very vibey) time period and I really hope this sets a precedent and we get more books set in Renaissance Italy. After this, I will definitely be reading Ibanez’s first YA duology, the Secrets of the Nile series, and I hope she writes historical fantasy forever and ever!

Have you read Graceless Heart yet? If you like historical fantasy, it’s a must-read! If you’ve got any recommendations, drop them in the comments below.