Books & Java

The Seven Sisters 

by Lucinda Riley 

Synopsis: 

Maia D’Apliese and her five sisters gather together at their childhood home, “Atlantis”—a fabulous, secluded castle situated on the shores of Lake Geneva—having been told that their beloved father, who adopted them all as babies, has died. Each of them is handed a tantalizing clue to her true heritage—a clue which takes Maia across the world to a crumbling mansion in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Once there, she begins to put together the pieces of her story and its beginnings.

Eighty years earlier in Rio’s Belle Epoque of the 1920s, Izabela Bonifacio’s father has aspirations for his daughter to marry into the aristocracy. Meanwhile, architect Heitor da Silva Costa is devising plans for an enormous statue, to be called Christ the Redeemer, and will soon travel to Paris to find the right sculptor to complete his vision. Izabela—passionate and longing to see the world—convinces her father to allow her to accompany him and his family to Europe before she is married. There, at Paul Landowski’s studio and in the heady, vibrant cafes of Montparnasse, she meets ambitious young sculptor Laurent Brouilly, and knows at once that her life will never be the same again.

In this sweeping, epic tale of love and loss—the first in a unique, spellbinding series of seven novels—Lucinda Riley showcases her storytelling talent like never before. 

 

My Review:

 

Wow!!! 

 

FANTASTIC. And, what a cliffhanger at the end. Can't wait to read the next installment. 

 

This was historical fiction with a great deal of mystery, romance, and mystical intrigue. Six sisters, all adopted daughters to a Swiss magnate. Each has a unique background for why and how they came to be adopted by him. Upon his sudden death, they are each given a clue as to their origins. In this first book, we follow Maia's journey to find out about her past. Maia is the oldest of the six sisters and the one who inspired Mr. D'Apliese (known to the girls as Pa Salt because of his love of the ocean and sailing) to adopt her other five sisters. Maia leaves the comfort of the island estate (Atlantis) off the coast of Lake Geneva to travel across the world to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil where she will learn her familial connection to the building of the iconic Christ the Redeemer statue atop Corcovado mountain. While in Brazil, Maia finds that her story starts in the 1920s and 1930s during the design and building of the Christ when her great-grandmother, Izabela, was a young high-society girl of 17. We learn about the love affair with the French sculptor Laurent Brouilly that turns her life around leading to the birth and adoption of Maia a couple of generations later. I have never read a book that took place in Brazil and this was an amazing experience. The descriptions of life and the scenery of Rio was incredible. This book was hard to put down as it was mesmerizing and the story and characters were so exotic. It has a great lead into the next book which tells the story of the second sister. Can't wait to read it!