“[A] beguiling fairy tale.” —Vanity Fair (A Best Book of Summer)
“Enchanted...A slow-burn gothic novel that will make you lose track of your surroundings…An atmospheric banger.” —LitHub
Venice, 1717. Fifteen-year-old Luisa has only wanted one thing: to be the best at violin. As a student at the Ospedale della Pietà, she hopes to join the highest ranks of its illustrious girls’ orchestra and become a protégé of the great Antonio Vivaldi. Luisa is good at violin, but she is not the best. She has peers, but she does not have friends. Until Maddalena.
After a scandal threatens her noble family’s reputation, Maddalena is sent to the Pietà to preserve her marriage prospects. When she meets Luisa, Maddalena feels the stirrings of a friendship unlike anything she has known. But Maddalena has a secret: she has hatched a dangerous plot to rescue her future her own way. When she invites Luisa into her plans, promising to make her dreams come true, Luisa doesn’t hesitate. But every wager has its price, and as the girls are drawn into the decadent world outside the Pietà’s walls, they must decide what it is they truly want—and what they will do to pay for it.
Lush and heady, swirling with music and magic, Maddalena and the Dark is a Venetian fairytale about the friendship between two girls and the boundless desire that will set them free, if it doesn’t consume them first.
Genre: Fantasy
“Enchanted...A slow-burn gothic novel that will make you lose track of your surroundings…An atmospheric banger.” —LitHub
Venice, 1717. Fifteen-year-old Luisa has only wanted one thing: to be the best at violin. As a student at the Ospedale della Pietà, she hopes to join the highest ranks of its illustrious girls’ orchestra and become a protégé of the great Antonio Vivaldi. Luisa is good at violin, but she is not the best. She has peers, but she does not have friends. Until Maddalena.
After a scandal threatens her noble family’s reputation, Maddalena is sent to the Pietà to preserve her marriage prospects. When she meets Luisa, Maddalena feels the stirrings of a friendship unlike anything she has known. But Maddalena has a secret: she has hatched a dangerous plot to rescue her future her own way. When she invites Luisa into her plans, promising to make her dreams come true, Luisa doesn’t hesitate. But every wager has its price, and as the girls are drawn into the decadent world outside the Pietà’s walls, they must decide what it is they truly want—and what they will do to pay for it.
Lush and heady, swirling with music and magic, Maddalena and the Dark is a Venetian fairytale about the friendship between two girls and the boundless desire that will set them free, if it doesn’t consume them first.
Genre: Fantasy
Praise for this book
"From its first sentence, this novel curled its crooked little witch's finger around my heart and still hasn't let go . . . Maddalena and the Dark completely seduced me with its menace, and it is undoubtedly Fine's best yet." - Amy Jo Burns
"Maddalena and the Dark is chocolate laced with poison. To read it is to fall under an enchantment . . . Julia Fine is a writer of ferocious talent and originality, and . . . she has crafted a sweeping, dark fairy tale about the violent hearts of teenage girls. I loved it from the first sentence to the astonishing final lines." - Katie Gutierrez
"Maddalena and the Dark is a tense, slow-burning portrait of how desire too easily tangles with envy and the price we pay when we get what we want . . . Maddalena and the Dark is a book to be savored, felt, and reread." - Isle McElroy
"Maddalena and the Dark is the book of my dreams - a feverish, intimate story of obsession and ambition, set in Venice's shadowy canals and glittering palazzos, with an ending that still keeps me up at night. Fine's writing is magnetic and unstoppable. I can't stop talking to people about this book!" - Sara Sligar
"Maddalena and the Dark is an ecstatic, immersive, layered and astonishingly rendered depiction of girlhood, ambition, violence, art, and desire." - Lynn Steger Strong
"Maddalena and the Dark is chocolate laced with poison. To read it is to fall under an enchantment . . . Julia Fine is a writer of ferocious talent and originality, and . . . she has crafted a sweeping, dark fairy tale about the violent hearts of teenage girls. I loved it from the first sentence to the astonishing final lines." - Katie Gutierrez
"Maddalena and the Dark is a tense, slow-burning portrait of how desire too easily tangles with envy and the price we pay when we get what we want . . . Maddalena and the Dark is a book to be savored, felt, and reread." - Isle McElroy
"Maddalena and the Dark is the book of my dreams - a feverish, intimate story of obsession and ambition, set in Venice's shadowy canals and glittering palazzos, with an ending that still keeps me up at night. Fine's writing is magnetic and unstoppable. I can't stop talking to people about this book!" - Sara Sligar
"Maddalena and the Dark is an ecstatic, immersive, layered and astonishingly rendered depiction of girlhood, ambition, violence, art, and desire." - Lynn Steger Strong
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