The Sonnet Lover Book

This is one of those books I wanted to like a great deal more than I actually did. The premise was very interesting to me: Rose Asher, a lit professor who specializes in Renaissance sonnets, finds herself drawn into a controversy surrounding the discovery of a cache of new work that might have been written by a lover of William Shakespeare. In her quest to discover the truth behind these mysterious poems, she travels to Italy where she has to confront not just the past of her elusive poet, but also unresolved emotions from her own.

The primary strength of this book lies in Goodman's ability to capture a sense of place. Her descriptions of the Italian villa where much of the book is set are beautifully drawn, and her integration of the customs of both modern and historical Florence was particularly interesting to me.

Unfortunately, these few gems are weighed down by a surprisingly clunky plot. Asher's trip to Italy is inspired by an early twist that relied on so many highly implausible events, it broke the spell of the story early on. I kept going because I enjoyed certain aspects of the writing, but I was disappointed to discover that the plot throughout relies heavily on things like chance eavesdropping and coincidental meetings to move the story forward. In addition, I have never been more aware of an author's manipulation of character actions than in this book. With any first person story, it's always hard to know the true motivation of secondary characters, but in this case, those characters rarely behaved in ways that were consistent with anything other than a formulaic need to move the plot along in a suspenseful fashion.

This is Goodman's fifth book, and I've noted other reviewers say it is not as good as her earlier works. Aspects of the writing were appealing enough for me to think I might look for some of her previous books, but I can't really recommend this one.