#BookReview: Belladonna by Anbara Salam ~4Stars

Synopsis: An evocative, atmospheric story of friendship and obsession set in the 1950s that follows two schoolgirls from Connecticut whose lives are changed forever when they travel to a silent convent in northern Italy to study art for a year

Isabella is beautiful, inscrutable, and popular. Her best friend, Bridget, keeps quietly to the fringes of their Connecticut Catholic school, watching everything and everyone, but most especially Isabella.

In 1957, when the girls graduate, they land coveted spots at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Pentila in northern Italy, a prestigious art history school in the grounds of a silent convent. There, free of her claustrophobic home and the town that will always see her and her Egyptian mother as outsiders, Bridget discovers she can re-invent herself as anyone she desires.

Only Isabella knows the real Bridget, just as Bridget knows the true Isabella. But as that glittering year goes on, Bridget begins to suspect Isabella is keeping secrets from her, secrets that will ruin all of her plans and that will change the course of their lives forever. 


Goodreads | Amazon

Rating: ★★★★
My Review: This was a weird book to read, but I loved it!! It was a great story about how things change and how you can lose a friend. Love, hate, manipulation etc.  It was a horrifying tale but also beautiful. Great pacing and characters. 

“Salam writes beautifully about the beguiling nature of desire, and what we're willing to throw into its fire in order to get what it is we believe we want. ... I was utterly captivated, from first page to last.”—Anton DiSclafani, New York Times bestselling author of The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls and The After Party

“A moving tale about identity, love, and loss. Anbara Salam unspools a compelling narrative about a young woman struggling to find herself amid family secrets and her own hidden truths. It’s the kind of emotionally rich story that stays with you.” —Anissa Gray, author of The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls
 “Recalling Eleanor Catton’s The Rehearsal meets Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides meets Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley, this unputdownable and lush novel had me entranced and totally absorbed in the woozy, covertly sensual world of a 1950s Italian convent. Anbara Salam has a gimlet-eyed, ferocious talent for capturing the obsessive urgency and convolutions of power and desire in adolescent experience.”—Sharlene Teo, author of Ponti

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Posted in: 4 Stars, Adult, Berkley, Review