Unveiling Venus Book Review

Unveiling Venus by Sophia Bennett

P.S. This review contains SPOILERS for book one, so if you haven’t read Following Ophelia but want to, please click away now!

Mary Adams, once a servant, has now firmly put aside her old life to become Persephone Lavelle– a muse for great artists and a glamorous socialite. But even someone as admired as Persephone has some skeletons in her closet. Having promised to stay away from Felix (a struggling artists) to keep her cousin and niece off the streets, Persephone has no choice but to flee from her feelings. Rather than admit defeat however, she decides to embrace her new-found socialite status. With her best friend Kitty by her side, Persephone gets to glimpse the life she’s always dreamed of– beautiful dresses, lavish Venetian masquerades and Mayfair townhouses. But when she meets a strange and alluring man dressed as the Harlequin on a gondola in Italy, Persephone must ask herself how far she is willing to go to explore that attraction. Suddenly Persephone can have everything, but it comes at a very dear cost…

Thanks to Netgalley, for allowing me to read a copy of this book in return for an honest review.

I first encountered Following Ophelia at the Waterstones stall at YALC last year. It was one of those books that looks quite intriguing, but since the author was signing at the same time as a bunch of other people I wanted to meet, I decided to wait and see if the book store on site had a pre-signed copy in later that day. Thankfully, they did, and so I got to experience the wonderful world of Persephone Lavelle. I’d just come out of another historical fiction series set in Victorian London (the Dark Days series, if anyone was curious) so I was quite in the mood for something similar. Following Ophelia, with its focus on Pre-Raphelite art, seemed like the perfect book to whet my appetite. Anything that combines art and romance and pretty cities is a definite yes from me. Turns out I made a good decision- though not perfect, Bennett’s first novel in the series was enticing and fun, and I rushed through it very quickly. So it was something of a big deal when I saw the sequel appear on Netgalley. I got accepted to read an ARC and eagerly downloaded it.

First of all, I have to say how much I like Persephone. She’s a breath of fresh air in the Victorian era of women always caring about social decorum, and I loved seeing what kinds of reckless adventures she would get up to. She can be a little annoying at times– she’s just as selfish as she is bold, just as flighty as she is adventurous, but I felt this was a good balance to her character. Part of it is that she also always seems to be thrown into impossible rock and hard place situations. I felt pretty sorry for her, as much as I eagerly anticipated what she would eventually choose to do, wondering if she would make the same decisions I would make in her place. Most of the time she didn’t, and I would sometimes wish I could yell at her through the pages of the novel: what are you DOING? NOOOOO. But hey, that’s the sign of a good book. High levels of reader angst is exactly what we crave, even as we’re busy lying about how relaxing reading is. Anyhow…. poor Persephone. I do think she’s really hard done by in some respects, even as she’s busy preening about how pretty she looks, and sort of sponging off other people. Like, I get that she doesn’t have much of a choice, and a lot of the time her reputation is at stake, but it did get a bit old when she kept using people as benefactors to fund her lifestyle. But again, that actually seemed like a real flaw in her character, so as annoying as I found it, I also quite liked it.

Also, if you’re a bit of a travel nerd, you definitely have to read this book. Seeing Venice through Persephone’s eyes was simply amazing. I felt like I was bobbing around on a gondola myself, being whisked around from glamorous location to glamorous location. Bennett does a stunning job of describing London too. Even if you’ve visited these cities before, you definitely feel like she’s bringing something new to the table. Same as her approach to art– I loved seeing how Persephone’s love of paintings shone out through the page, and I was pleased at myself for recognizing so many of the names of painters and artworks mentioned in this series. The way she describes the paintings is definitely my favourite thing about these books, and I would love to see some of them having now read about them.

One of the few flaws I found in Unveiling Venus was the sameness of it. It doesn’t really deviate much from the plot of book one, which was essentially create a load of chemistry with a potential romance, then put the protagonist in an awkward position, make her choose to betray people she loves in order to get the guy and the life or make her lose her chance at love, then when she’s stuck and friendless, get some random male acquaintance to swoop in and save her. This time is a little different, since it’s less about her wanting the romance so much as the safety of a rich husband, but it still feels like the whole plot is just book one but tweaked. If there’s a book three [the book ends with one of those ambiguous endings which could be a conclusion or could be the start of another book] I hope there’s some shake up to the plot that makes it more interesting. I’ve been a high school girl before, and I’ve known people who have gone through that awkward I-am-single-again-I-must-not-be-alone-ahhh-now-I-love-this-person drama. It gets old pretty fast, and it just makes the book drag in the exact places it should be most interesting.

Overall, I really liked this book, and I would happily pick up potential/hopeful book three in the future if I knew I was going to be getting something fresh in the plot. Otherwise, Unveiling Venus is a stunning sequel, full of art and history and culture, and definitely worth picking up in stores!

7/10 for me.