Are you ready to be transported to a picturesque setting on the Amalfi Coast, where the warm rays of the sun are warming your skin, the salt spray is in the air, and the sand is between your toes? The Amalfi Curse (Park Row 2025) by Sarah Penner is an enjoyable tale of mystery, adventure, and romance. Told in multiple voices and dual stories, the novel is a historical fantasy of greed, lust, and piracy underscoring a tale of modern-day treasure hunting and murder. Sarah Penner has done a beautiful job of transporting the reader via her descriptions to a place that the reader can easily picture in their mind.
In the modern-day part of the tale, the reader meets Haven Ambrose. She is a nautical archaeologist and has gathered a team to photograph and document wrecks off the coast of Positano, Italy. Secretly, she has a hidden agenda. She is hoping to find her late father’s discovery of sunken gems in the region.
Her friend and co-worker Mal, along with local dive shop owner, Enzo, help Haven in her endeavors. They discover clues that lead to a secret long buried concerning events in Positano. Solving this mystery may prove to be treacherous because the area has become unstable due to volcanic-like activity. Haven will also have to contend with her father’s former friend and her rival treasure hunter, Conrad. He threatens the stability of the funding for the Project Relic team and appears to have a hidden agenda of his own. Help, in unraveling the mystery, comes from an old diary Haven discovers in the archive. Along with information on the Mazza brothers and the wreck, Haven also discovers a cache of old letters that tell the tale of a love affair between an American, Holmes and an Italian woman named Mari. She hopes these letters will contain clues that lead to the answers that she seeks. As Enzo and Haven’s attraction for one another grows, the dual timelines begin to mirror one another.
In the past, Mari DeLuca, like many women of her day, is being forced into marriage by her father. She doesn’t want to marry this man she doesn’t love only to please her father. Unbeknownst to him, Mari holds a special secret. She, along with some of the other women in Positano, is a sea witch, a Streghe. They use witchcraft to control the sea thus helping to benefit their community. Their practices, however, draw the attention of the pirate duo, the Mazza brothers, who desire to control one of them and use their power for their own greed. One day, tragedy strikes. A murder occurs setting events in motion that will change not only the lives of everyone in Mari’s world but will also reveal the answers that change the lives of those in Haven’s world as well.
The novel’s interwoven dual timeline was a smart choice on the author’s part. This layout kept the tension and action of the story moving forward. I did, however, long for more of Mari’s tale. I felt that her tale was the stronger of the two timelines and I wanted more. The reader might be interested to know that streghe is the Italian word for witches that practice folk magic. Stregheria is an Americanized word for the practice of this Italian witchcraft, according to the September 11, 2017, article,“Stregheria And Italian-American Folk Magic” on italianfolkmagic.com. Additionally, as I was looking briefly into the myths or folk legends of the region, I ran across these two stories on travelamalficoast.it. The first is that Li Galli, the archipelago off the coast of Positano, is thought to be the place where mermaids dwell. The second is The Legend of Janare, which tells of women dressed in long white nightshirts who greet returning fishermen on the beach with their sweet songs but become their unsuspecting victims.
This novel is perfect for those looking for something light, those looking for a romance with low spice, or those looking for a cozy mystery set at sea. For those concerned about the tale being fantasy, this story is not high fantasy but better described as magical realism. The novel contains elements that are magical (the sea witches and their craft) but doesn’t contain the elements generally found in true fantasy. A perfect light escape on a cold winter’s day.
Sarah Penner
Sarah Penner is the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of The Lost Apothecary and The London Séance Society. A graduate of the University of Kansas, Sarah spent thirteen years in corporate finance and now writes full-time. She and her husband live in Florida.
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