Reviews for Ciao Bella: A Novel

The average rating for Ciao Bella: A Novel based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-08-02 00:00:00 Kris Sanders A postal book club selection, this World War II novel, from the point of view of an Italian woman (girl, really) whose husband joins the Resistance after Germany occupies Italy. She is trying to keep her head up and her in laws alive. A solid okay

Review # 2 was written on 2014-12-28 00:00:00 Mark Koehne This book reads like the rough first draft of a really good novel. Unfortunately, the writing just doesn't match the potential of the premise. I would have enjoyed this much more if it had been primarily a story about an Italian family living through the trauma and aftermath WWII, with a complicated emotional relationship arising in the midst. But instead, it was primarily a complicated love triangle that just happened to be set in postwar Italy. The characters could have been really compelling if they had been more than a set of "types" fleshed out only through truly awful, trite dialogue. I read to the end, but really only because I'm so close to meeting my reading challenge for the year! Otherwise, I probably would have abandoned this one based on the dialogue alone. That said, there were so many good kernels of storytelling here. It could have been much more, but it felt like the authors settled for a pretty good romance story instead of creating something deeply moving.