AUTHOR: EVIE BLAKE
Pages: 446
Date: 23/04/2013
Grade: 5-
Details: no. 2 Valentina
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Through the author
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“When you climax, it
has been called the “little death”, and thus eroticism can actually be a
celebration of life within the knowledge of our mortality.”
The first Valentina book ended with our heroine losing
the man who loves her because she is unable to admit to her feelings for him.
When this book starts, several months have passed and Valentina has had no
contact whatsoever with Theo and no idea where he is. That doesn’t stop her from
thinking about him and mourning the fact that she allowed herself to chase him
away though. An opportunity to participate in a show of erotic photography in London could be just what
she needs to distract herself from obsessing about the man she misses more than
she could ever have expected.
Back in 1948 Maria Brzezinska leaves Venice
and her two mothers for post-war London
where she is to study contemporary dance. It isn’t long after arriving that
Maria falls for the charming but significantly older Felix, a French filmmaker.
When Felix has to return to his native Paris
shortly after a rather disastrous dance performance by Maria, she begs him to
take her with him. It is in Paris
that Maria will discover love and passion like she never imagined, unleashing a
side of her that she never knew existed.
London in 2012
will be a place filled with revelations for Valentina. Not only does she discover
that the father she hasn’t seen since she was a young girl lives there, she
also finds herself face to face with Theo once again. But although all the
signals he sends out seem to indicate that he still has feelings for her, the
fact that he is going out with Anita, a burlesque dancer, point in a totally
different direction. When Theo asks Valentina to trust him, she knows that this
is her opportunity to prove to him that she does love him. Putting her trust in
a man who appears to be dating somebody else may well be a demand too far for
Valentina and her huge issues with commitment though. But while Anita may appear
to be her adversary when it comes to Theo’s affections, she is also the means
through which Valentina discovers a side to her maternal grandmother she was
completely unaware of.
This is a very good sequel to the first book. Often a
second book in a trilogy can feel a bit like filler material; a means for
getting from the start of the story to the ending without any real value of its
own. Not so in this case. This book really does further the story. Through the
events in this book, both in the present and in the past, the reader gets a far
better understanding of Valentina and her commitment issues. Mind you,
Valentina is still a hard character to like and very insecure when it comes to
men and commitment, especially for a woman who is supposed to be 30-ish. But,
after what we learned about her great-grandmother (in the first book) and her
grand-mother (in this book) and their passionate but doomed encounters with
love, it becomes easier to understand why Valentina would be distrustful of
lasting love. I’ve got a feeling that the third book will give both the reader
and Valentina a closer look at Valentina’s mother. Hints in this book indicate
that there is a lot Valentina doesn’t know about her mother’s life as well as
her own past. I’m looking forward to finding out what exactly happened to make
Valentina’s mother such a distant character and if discovering the truth will
be enough to bring the two women back together and help Valentina trust her own
feelings.
This book is filled with clever references. There is a
tenuous link between the movies Felix makes and “The Story of O”. Also Evie
Blake pays a nice tribute to the original creator of her main character when
Anita dresses up to look just like Valentina:
“The angular
perfection of her black wig and her heavily made-up eyes make her look like a
graphic novel character more than a real woman.”
The Valentina as described in these books is, of
course, based on an iconic Italian graphic novel character created by Guido
Crepax.
And then there are the names. Theo’s surname is Steen
and we discover that Valentina’s father is called Rembrandt. Both names create
a wonderful and inspired link between Valentina’s story and the important role
art plays in these books. I am sure there are more clever references and links,
but these are a few that stood out for me.
While this is still a very sensual and at times sexy
story, sex plays a different role in this second book. Valentina is no longer
trying to discover her boundaries, no longer driven to see how far she is
willing to go. In this book it is Maria who is constantly pushing her sexual
boundaries but although she does get adventurous, her experiences are beautiful
and enticing rather than shocking. In fact, as much as sexual freedom was the
theme for the first book, this second instalment seems to reverse direction.
Relationships without boundaries may have been fun, but they are not without
their problems as various characters discover.
I said it in my review of Valentina, and I’ll say it
again here: Noelle Harrison, the author behind the name Evie Blake, is a
wonderful writer. She weaves her stories rather than tell them. Her words are
at times almost poetic, creating a tangible atmosphere which allows the reader
to not just observe events as they take place but also experience them. In
fact, I’m convinced that I wouldn’t have felt as strongly as I did about
Valentina’s character if it hadn’t been for the life-like fashion in which she
is portrayed on these pages.
It breaks my heart that I now have to wait until
November before I find out how this story ends. Between the hints about
Valentina’s mother and the cliff-hanger this book ends on, it is going to be
hard to contain my curiosity. The title of the third book, “Valentina Unblocked”,
makes me hopeful that it will all end on a positive note though.
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