Blurb:
Seduction, passion and the chance for new love.
A terrible truth that will change two lives forever.
Venetia
Aston-Montagu has escaped to Italy’s most captivating city to work in her
godmother’s architectural practice, putting a lost love behind her. For the
past ten years she has built a fortress around her heart, only to find the
walls tumbling down one night of the carnival when she is rescued from masked
assailants by an enigmatic stranger, Paolo Barone.
Drawn to the
powerfully seductive Paolo, despite warnings of his Don Juan reputation and
rumours that he keeps a mistress, Venetia can’t help being caught up in the
smouldering passion that ignites between them.
When she finds
herself assigned to a project at his magnificent home deep in the Tuscan
countryside, Venetia must not only contend with a beautiful young rival, but
also come face to face with the dark shadows of Paolo’s past that threaten to
come between them.
Can Venetia
trust that love will triumph, even over her own demons? Or will Paolo’s
carefully guarded, devastating secret tear them apart forever?
Excerpt:
The clock struck midnight just as Venetia went past
the grand eighteenth-century mirror hanging over the mantelpiece in the hall.
Instinctively she looked into it and her heart skipped a beat. In the firelight
she noticed that he was there again, an almost illusory figure, leaning against
the wall at the far end of the shadowy room, steady eyes intense, watching her
from behind his black mask. An illusory figure indeed, because when Venetia
turned around he was gone.
Venetia shivered. Nanny Horren’s voice resounded
through her head, reminding her of the strange Celtic superstitions that the
Scottish governess used to tell her. One in particular came to mind. ‘Turn
off the light and look into the mirror by firelight at midnight on Shrove
Tuesday,’ the old woman would whisper to the impressionable and imaginative
teenage Venetia, ‘and if you see a face reflected behind your own,
it’ll be the face of the love of your life, the man you will marry someday.’
Was this what had just happened to Venetia? Was
this stranger the love of her life?
Rubbish, she remonstrated,
laughing uneasily into her own eyes, you’re mad! Haven’t you learnt
your lesson? Venetia had indulged in such fantasies several years ago
and had only managed to get hurt. Now, she knew better. Still, she did not move
away. Venetia leant closer to the mirror that reflected her pale, startled face
in the flickering light, as tremors of the warm feelings of yester love
suddenly flooded her being. For a few moments she seemed to lose all sense of
where she was and felt as though she stood inside a globe, watching the wheel
of time turning back ten years.
Gareth Jordan Carter. ‘Judd’. It was a diminutive
of Jordan, chosen by Venetia who hated the name Gareth and didn’t care much for
the name Jordan either. Judd had been her first love, and as far as Venetia was
concerned, her last. She had been young and innocent then; only eighteen.
Today, at twenty-eight, she liked to think she was a woman of the world, who
would not allow herself to be trapped by the treacherous illusions of passion,
however appealing they might seem. She had paid a high price for her naivety
and impetuosity.
Venetia tried to shake herself clear of those
haunting phantasms and her thoughts ambled back to the masked stranger – well,
almost a stranger.
Their brief encounter had occurred the evening of
the first night of Il Carnevale di Venezia, ten days before
Shrove Tuesday …
Beauty and the Beast:
For the love of legends
For me, researching a book is just as enjoyable as writing
it. I set each of my novels in a passionate,
romantic country, and so that I can really transport my readers there, I
immerse myself in the setting: its history, its scenery, its cuisine, its
culture. Top of my research list are local legends – I love colourful, age-old
stories; the more fantastical, the better!
Since I was a young girl, tucked up in bed and listening
avidly to my governess weaving bedtime tales, I have loved legends. Fairytales
too, of course – they sowed the seeds for my romantic nature – but legends
fascinated me most: those that have stood the test of time, that offer
intriguing explanations for the modern world, that are at once fantastical and
yet, somehow, believable.
My novel The Echoes of Love, set in Venice, Tuscany and Sardinia, incorporates
various Italian legends – told by the hero, Paolo, who is a raconteur
extraordinaire, to my heroine, Venetia – and in my research files I collected
many more. What better way to share some of these most romantic, magical and atmospheric
tales but in this Echoes of Love
‘Legendary’ Blog Tour!
Today I’m exploring a very famous
legend, which has its origins in Italy.
Beauty and the Beast
No doubt you don’t need me to
tell you the classic story of Beauty and the Beast: the story abounds in
popular culture, from the Disney version to the likes of King Kong. But the original story of Beauty and the Beast is quite
different to that commonly drawn upon. It was published in 1550 by writer Giovanni
Francesco Straparola of Caravaggio, who was the first European to collect
together such folklore and is recognised as the father of the literary
fairytale as we know it.
His story was entitled The Pig King:
Once upon a time a barren queen begged a fairy for a child. The fairy
worked her magic, but told her that the son would be a pig until he had married
thrice. In due course, the queen gave birth to her son – a pig. The king was
appalled, and initially planned to cast the pig into the sea. But his paternal
instinct won out, and the pig was raised as a child.
When he reached adulthood the prince asked his mother to find him a
wife. This she did, but the girl she found, one of three sisters, was revolted
by the pig prince and resolved to kill him. The pig got there first, however,
and trampled her to death on their wedding night. One wife down!
Next, the prince asked for the hand of his first wife’s sister. History
repeated itself. Two wives down!
Finally, the prince married the third sister. She was different to her
siblings: gentler, responsive to his affection. The night of their marriage,
the prince shed his pig skin, and the two were united as humans. Still, come
morning he put on the skin again: he did not know how to be a man out in the
world.
So it continued, pig by day, man by night, until his wife told the king
and queen of their son’s secret. The king came to the prince’s bedchamber at
night, and he destroyed the pig skin. The prince was freed of the curse, the
king stepped down and ‘King Pig’ as he was known was crowned. He and his queen
lived happily ever after.
The Beauty and the Beast
legend – and this original version, in
which the Beast struggles to allow himself to let go of his ‘beastliness’ – has
particular resonance in The Echoes of
Love, because since a terrible accident, Paolo has viewed himself as a
Beast: ‘Ever since I woke up in that hospital bed with no memory and a battered
body and face,’ he tells Venetia, ‘I’ve regarded myself as an abomination, an
abhorrent creature.’ Also like the Beast, he has a rose garden, which is his
sanctuary. He explains:
‘Like the Beast I guarded my roses jealously, maybe in the hope that
one day a beautiful and kind-hearted lady would enter my garden, close her eyes
to my defects and release me from my pain.’
Is Venetia Paolo’s Beauty, with
the power to break the spell under which he is living? Will she turn Beast into
man? I’m itching to tell you, but I wouldn’t want to spoil the ending of the
book…
Author Bio:
Hannah Fielding
is a novelist, a dreamer, a traveller, a mother, a wife and an incurable
romantic. The seeds for her writing career were sown in early childhood, spent
in Egypt, when she came to an agreement with her governess Zula: for each fairy
story Zula told, Hannah would invent and relate one of her own. Years later –
following a degree in French literature, several years of travelling in Europe,
falling in love with an Englishman, the arrival of two beautiful children and a
career in property development – Hannah decided after so many years of yearning
to write that the time was now. Today, she lives the dream: she writes full
time, splitting her time between her homes in Kent, England, and the South of
France, where she dreams up romances overlooking breathtaking views of the
Mediterranean.
Her first novel,
Burning Embers, is a vivid, evocative
love story set against the backdrop of tempestuous and wild Kenya of the 1970s,
reviewed by one newspaper as ‘romance like Hollywood used to make’. Her new
novel, The Echoes of Love, is a story
of passion, betrayal and intrigue set in the romantic and mysterious city of
Venice and the beautiful landscape of Tuscany. It was picked by The Sun newspaper as one of the most
romantic books ever written.
Social media links
Website: www.hannahfielding.net
Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/fieldinghannah
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/fieldinghannah
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5333898.Hannah_Fielding
Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/fieldinghannah
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/fieldinghannah
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5333898.Hannah_Fielding
Buy links
Amazon.co.uk: http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Echoes-Love-Hannah-Fielding-ebook/dp/B00H3S3FFO/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1386249349&sr=8-1
Barnes and
Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-echoes-of-love-hannah-fielding/1117405658?ean=9780992671839
Book trailer
Follow the tour
If you’d like to read more Italian legends like this, and
keep up with the accompanying Very Venetian giveaway in which lots of romantic
goodies are up for grabs, follow the Echoes
of Love ‘Legendary’ Blog Tour this month:
1 May: Oh My
Books!
3 May: Maldivian
Book Reviewer
4 May: Krystal Clear Book Reviews
5 May: Romance
Junkies
7 May: Book Briefs
8 May: Words
I Write Crazy
9 May: Luxury Reading
10 May: The
Little Reader Library
11 May: Kristy Centeno
13 May: Love
Romance Passion
14 May: MamaKitty
Reviews
15 May: Books
& Other Spells
16 May: Pages
of Comfort
19 May: The
Flashlight Reader
20 May: The Window
Seat on a Rainy Day
21 May: Simply Ali
22 May: Reviews by
Molly
25 May: Reese's
Reviews
26 May: Moonlight,
Lace, and Mayhem
29 May: Tiffany
Talks Books
30 May: Reading Between the Wines
31 May: Rites of
Romance
WIN in the Very Venetian giveaway
At least one reader commenting on this post will WIN in the Very Venetian giveaway, with
prizes totalling more than $600:
·
5 signed hardback copies of The Echoes of Love
·
10 signed paperback copies of The Echoes of Love
·
3 romantic Venetian masks
·
Lots of fabulously colourful Murano glass
goodies: 16 pendants, 2 bracelets, 2 paperweights and a vase
Anyone who comments on a blog tour stop post will be
entered in the giveaway. Simply comment below, including your email address so
that Hannah can contact the winners. Good luck! Ends June 1st.
This was a great read. I loved it and what a gorgeous cover. Would love to win!
ReplyDeleteNice cover
ReplyDeletebn100candg at hotmail dot com
This book sounds really interesting. I have added it to my TBR list.
ReplyDeleteJWIsley(at)aol(dot)com