Book Review:
Playing with Fire by Tess Gerritsen
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Synopsis:
What if your child wanted you dead?

Julia doesn't understand what is happening to her daughter, but she thinks she knows what's causing it. She is terrified for Lily, and for herself, but what scares her more is that no one believes her.

If she is going to help Lily, she will have to find the answers alone, embarking on a search that will take her to the shadowy back streets of Venice.

There, Julia uncovers a heartbreaking, long-buried tale of tragedy and devastation - a discovery that puts her in serious danger. Some people will do anything in their power to keep the truth silent . . .

Review:
A stand-alone rather than part of Gerritsen's lauded Rizzoli & Isles series, Playing with Fire travels between the US and Italy, across two time frames and weaves music, history and the Holocaust together. It's not for the faint-hearted, but that is Gerritsen's forte and where she positively shines. I was on the edge of my seat throughout, frantically turning the pages of my kindle to discover whether Julia could do enough to save Lily.

*I received an eARC from the publisher via NetGalley. This is my unbiased review.

#BookReview #NetGalley #TessGerritsen #PlayingWithFire #BooksOfInstagram #Bookstagram

EXCERPT: I haven't looked at this music since the day I bought it in Rome. Now, as I clip the page to the stand, I think of that gloomy antiques shop, and the proprietor, lurking like some cave creature in the alcove. Goose bumps suddenly stipple my skin, as if the chill of the shop still clings to this music.

I pick up my violin and begin to play.

On this humid afternoon, my instrument sounds deeper, richer than ever, the tone mellow and warm. The first thirty-two bars of the waltz are as beautiful as I'd imagined, a lament in a mournful baritone. But at measure forty, the notes accelerate. The melody twists and turns, jarred by the accidentals, and soars into the seventh position on the E-string. Sweat breaks out on my face as I struggle to stay in tune and maintain the tempo. I feel as if my bow takes off on its own, that it's moving as though bewitched and I'm just struggling to hold onto it. Oh, what glorious music this is! What a performance piece, if I can master it. The notes skitter up the scale. Suddenly I lose all control and everything goes off-pitch, my left hand cramping as the music builds to a frenzy.

A small hand grasps my leg. Something warm and wet smears my skin.

I stop playing and look down. Lily stares up at me, her eyes as clear as turquoise water. Even as I jump up in dismay and wrench the garden tool from her bloody hand, not a ripple disturbs her calm blue eyes. Her bare feet have tracked footprints across the patio flagstone. With growing horror, I follow those footprints back to the source of the blood.

Then I start screaming.

ABOUT 'PLAYING WITH FIRE': What if your child wanted you dead?

Julia doesn't understand what is happening to her daughter, but she thinks she knows what's causing it. She is terrified for Lily, and for herself, but what scares her more is that no one believes her.

If she is going to help Lily, she will have to find the answers alone, embarking on a search that will take her to the shadowy back streets of Venice.

There, Julia uncovers a heartbreaking, long-buried tale of tragedy and devastation - a discovery that puts her in serious danger. Some people will do anything in their power to keep the truth silent...

MY THOUGHTS: Wow! I picked this up and didn't put it down until I had finished. Playing With Fire is an extremely cleverly crafted novel. The melody in 'Incendio' is not the only thing that twists and turns.

We switch between present day Brookline, Massachusetts with violinist Julia Ansdell, and the late 1930's in Venice, Italy with violinist Lorenzo Todesco, composer of Incendio.

Interspersed with Julia's battles to master this complex composition, and the atrocities perpetrated by her three year old daughter Lily, is Lorenzo's story which takes place as the rights of the Italian Jews are being eroded, and eventually as they are rounded up and sent north to 'labour camps.' But as we all know, they were no labour camps. The reality was far more grim.

Playing With Fire gripped me from the first page to the last. There is a palpable sense of menace emanating from both storylines. I cannot even begin to imagine what it must be like to fear that your angelic looking three year old daughter is trying to kill you. Nor what it must be like to be torn from your home in the middle of the night with only the clothes on your back, herded away from everything that is familiar and dear to you, and then forcibly separated from your loved ones.

Playing With Fire was nothing like I expected. It was even better.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

#PlayingWithFire #NetGalley #tess.gerritsen #bantampress

@tessgerritsen @BantamPress

#fivestarread #contemporaryfiction #crime #familydrama #historicalfaction #mystery #thriller

THE AUTHOR: Internationally bestselling author Tess Gerritsen took an unusual route to a writing career. A graduate of Stanford University, Tess went on to medical school at the University of California, San Francisco, where she was awarded her M.D.

While on maternity leave from her work as a physician, she began to write fiction. Now retired from medicine, she writes full time. She lives in Maine.

DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Random House UK, Transworld Publishing, Bantam Press via Netgalley for providing a digital ARC of Playing With Fire by Tess Gerritsen for review. I unreservedly apologise for taking so long to read this. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

For an explanation of my rating system please refer to my Goodreads.com profile page or the about page on sandysbookaday.wordpress.com

This review and others are also published on Twitter, Amazon, Instagram and my webpage https://sandysbookaday.wordpress.com/...

Tess Gerritsen's books are always fantastic I have read her novels for years and this is no exception, just brilliant and recommend to anyone who loves a taut crime thriller.

A tangled mystery to reveal an ongoing cover up of historical shame. Well-paced into the reveal. Who can you trust?

This is a nice book, easy to read, gives a nice atmosphere and a good historical backstory that is entertaining to read. But i personally felt as if that special little something was missing that i have connected in my mind with the author. Gerritsen for me is this huge mystery -did not see that coming!- kind of writer and that was completely missing in this book for me.

still a nice read and if you want a softer mystery that is almost more historical fiction than a mystery? Defiantly worth a read!