A Book Review
Extensive research through books, news articles, and personal travel is the basis for a page-turner about intrigue at the Vatican.Vatican Daughter is a novel about family, love, and murder in and around the Vatican. The story had me so enthralled I couldn’t put the book down, and I read the first fifty chapters in one sitting. The next day, the subterfuges and complicated plot kept creeping into my thoughts, so I had to sit down to read through to the end.
Joni Marie Iraci does a masterful job of introducing a myriad of characters and balancing their stories. As characters develop, the reader begins to understand their backgrounds and why they play the roles they do in the novel.
The author’s love for Venice shines through as she brings the city to life for the reader. She obviously has done thorough research (that always impresses me) into the story’s locations and into church scandals and intrigues. The result is an interesting page-turner that both educates and appalls the reader if, as the writer indicates in her notes, there have been similar incidents in the true history of the church in Rome.
Joni is a retired R.N, who after raising three children, earned a BA in liberal studies with a concentration in literature and creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College and an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University at the age of 65. Her first novel, “Reinventing Jenna Rose,” was published by an Indie publisher in 2019 and has been republished as a second edition by Left Coast Lit. It won the Firebird Book Award in 4 categories in 2022. Several short stories are published in online literary journals including, Review Americana, Quartz Literary and Medium. She has two more complete novels awaiting submission. She taught English Composition as an adjunct professor and assists students applying to college and grad school with their college applications. She resides in New York City and Naples, Florida.
Jonie says,”As a senior citizen, I am the embodiment of the adage…It’s never too late.” (to start writing a novel—which is available on Amazon)
https://www.facebook.com//jonimarieiraciauthor

