{"id":11748,"date":"2026-01-13T14:52:54","date_gmt":"2026-01-13T19:52:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=11748"},"modified":"2026-01-13T14:52:54","modified_gmt":"2026-01-13T19:52:54","slug":"jenny-kidd-by-laury-a-egan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=11748","title":{"rendered":"Jenny Kidd by Laury A. Egan"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Need to escape from this gloomy January weather? How about a vacation in sunny Italy\u2014Venice to be exact. In her new book, Jenny Kidd<\/em><\/a>, author Laury A. Egan recreates La Serenissima<\/em> so believably, you\u2019ll be surprised when you look up from her pages and discover it\u2019s still the middle of winter!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenny is visiting Venice in order to pursue her desire to become painter and, it\u2019s fair to say, to escape her overbearing father in America. Though she\u2019s twenty-five, he\u2019s convinced she shouldn\u2019t be so far away, unsupervised, much less pursuing a career in the arts that is most likely to come to nothing. So he believes. And tells her, repeatedly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At a gallery visit, she meets another young woman with an odd British accent and sketchy details, Randi Carroll. Randi is congenial but overly familiar\u2014flirtatious actually\u2014and tells Jenny about a costume party planned for that evening. The parties are held once a month at the palazzo of the wealthy Barbon family. Jenny decides to go, rents a costume, and it\u2019s an unsettling, lavishly described event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The guests don\u2019t remove their masks, and she can\u2019t tell if she\u2019s dancing with a man or a woman. Having too many drinks doesn\u2019t help. She does dance with one unmasked person, a beautiful woman wearing a distinctive rose-colored satin gown. Dancing with her is surprisingly sexy. This reaction, after the flirtatiousness of Randi unsettle Jenny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a day or two, she has occasion to meet the costume party hosts, Caterina Barbon and her younger brother, Sebatiano. Caterina is exceptionally beautiful, and she and Jenny agree she should paint Caterina\u2019s portrait. To her delight, it\u2019s turning out quite well. Through Caterina\u2019s many connections, Jenny meets a Venetian art dealer who wants to see more of her work. Her excitement over these promising new friendships and career developments\u2014and her determination to not give in to her father\u2019s worldview\u2014outweigh what, in other circumstances, might be natural caution. In fact, she ignores the warning signs: her flat has been robbed and, much worse, the delectable woman in the rose satin gown has turned up dead, floating in the lagoon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You may think Jenny\u2019s father\u2019s judgment is not so off-base when she takes up residence with the seductive and aristocratic Barbon siblings, who turn out to be pansexual. Surprising herself, she and Caterina begin a relationship, and it isn\u2019t until she realizes she cannot leave the house\u2014bars on the windows, locked doors, that her suspicions start to grow. From there on, the book takes on a heightened emotional intensity and unexpected twists that will leave you breathless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The sexual energy in Egan\u2019s work is undeniable. And she\u2019s not afraid to include characters who are complex and diverse. I\u2019ve read four of her books and find that she doesn\u2019t add a particular trait because it might be trendy, her characters are fully rounded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, I note that the cover of the first of her thrillers I read, The Psychologist\u2019s Shadow<\/em><\/a>, featured several elaborate Venetian carnival masks. Thinking about these four books, the idea of masks is a very apt theme for her work. You\u2019ll be hoping Jenny can see behind them in time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Need to escape from this gloomy January weather? How about a vacation in sunny Italy\u2014Venice to be exact. In her new book, Jenny Kidd, author Laury A. Egan recreates La Serenissima so believably, you\u2019ll be surprised when you look up … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[52,1749,126,32,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime","category-international","category-reading-2","category-thriller","category-travel"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-33u","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11748"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11748\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11752,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11748\/revisions\/11752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}