Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunant

So, did I give Sacred Hearts a ringing endorsement by forgetting that I had read it for 5 months?

Should you read it? Yeah, if you're looking for something entertaining that won't make you think too hard. You also might just learn something about history in the meantime.

The basic story is that there's a young woman named Serafina (that's her nun name...I don't recall her "real" name) whose father forces her to enter the convent to avoid her having a scandalous love affair with her voice coach. Serafina has a wonderful singing voice, so the convent is invested in her staying so that they will receive increased donations from the public who come to hear Serafina sing in the choir. There's a lot more politics involved in the running of a convent than I would have previously imagined, but I suppose one has to realize that politics are everywhere. Dunant is a talented author - her use of description and detail really transport you to the historical setting (16th century Italy) - and she manages to make the reader care about a romance between a young woman and a man who we never really meet.

There's suspense, there's romance. It was a great vacation read as I drifted around the lazy river at the resort, but the story is over the second you close the back cover. If you're looking for something that will stay with you, this probably isn't it. I like to think of certain books as rebound books - the kind that you read after a book that greatly impacted you in order to "get over" the previous book - this is one of those.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.