Juliet

Anne Fortier's artful retelling of one of the most famous of all love stories proves the perfect vehicle for Cassandra Campbell's elegant, nuanced performance. Julie journeys to Siena, Italy, to claim her inheritance, a "treasure" left by her mother. Julie finds herself drawn into not only another place but also another time, a time when her ancestor, Giulietta Tolomei, met handsome, young Romeo Marescotti. As their six-hundred-year-old romance unfolds, Campbell's voice flawlessly slips between fourteenth-century badinage and 21st-century wisecracks. As Julie discovers numerous folk legends about star-crossed lovers, blood feuds, and villainous lechers, she also discovers that someone may be trying to kill her. Is history repeating itself? Campbell's narration is as complex and multilayered as this compelling tale of past and present intrigue. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

Starred review from May 31, 2010
Fortier bobs and weaves between Shakespearean tragedy and popular romance for a high-flying debut in which American Julie Jacobs travels to Siena in search of her Italian heritage—and possibly an inheritance—only to discover she is descended from 14th-century Giulietta Tomei, whose love for Romeo defied their feuding families and inspired Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Julie's hunt leads her to the families' descendants, still living in Siena, still feuding, and still struggling under the curse of the friar who wished a plague on both their houses. Julie's unraveling of the past is assisted by a Felliniesque contessa and the contessa's handsome nephew, and complicated by mobsters, police, and a mysterious motorcyclist. To understand what happened centuries ago, in the previous generation, and all around her, Julie relies on relics: a painting, a journal, a dagger, a ring. Readers enjoy the additional benefit of antique texts alternating with contemporary narratives, written in the language of modern romance and enlivened by brisk storytelling. Fortier navigates around false clues and twists, resulting in a dense, heavily plotted love story that reads like a Da Vinci Code for the smart modern woman.