{Release Day Review} The Orphan's Song by Lauren Kate (@LaurenKateBooks @PutnamBooks)

The historical adult debut novel by # 1 New York Times bestselling author Lauren Kate, The Orphan's Song is a sweeping love story about family and music--and the secrets each hold--that follows the intertwined fates of two Venetian orphans. 

A song brought them together.
A secret will tear them apart.

Venice, 1736. When fate brings Violetta and Mino together on the roof of the Hospital of the Incurables, they form a connection that will change their lives forever. Both are orphans at the Incurables, dreaming of escape. But when the resident Maestro notices Violetta's voice, she is selected for the Incurables' world famous coro, and must sign an oath never to sing beyond its church doors.

After a declaration of love ends in heartbreak, Mino flees the Incurables in search of his family. Known as the "city of masks," Venice is full of secrets, and Mino is certain one will lead to his long-lost mother. Without him, the walls close in on Violetta and she begins a dangerous and forbidden nightlife, hoping her voice can secure her freedom. But neither finds what they are looking for, until a haunting memory Violetta has suppressed since childhood leads them to a shocking confrontation.

Vibrant with the glamour and beauty of Venice at its zenith, The Orphan's Song takes us on a breathtaking journey of passion, heartbreak, and betrayal before it crescendos to an unforgettable ending, a celebration of the enduring nature and transformative power of love.

​There is so much that Violetta wants to know about the world. She wants to know what it’s like outside of the walls of the Incurables.  She wants to know what it would be like to be as carefree as the glamourous women she watches drink the day away in the city’s grand cafés and more than anything, she wants to know what it’s really like to be loved.  
 
She thought that she had glimpsed true love one day while hiding out on the roof of the orphanage.  For Violetta, love was a boy with blonde hair who could play the violin with breathtaking passion.  Love was something that she would never be able to call her own.

Before she lost her nerve, she stepped close and put her arms around Mino. She leaned her head against his and held him, feeling his arms come around her. Her cheek to his, she gazed beyond his shoulder to the horizon. 
For years, each of them had nurtured this music privately within them. Now Violetta could almost see how the song had entered into the world. They’d let it out, a physical force, a subtle shift of light and sky. 
​It was everywhere. How far would it go?

​Mino was one of the rare orphans who could remember his mother. He could still hear her voice singing a song that he thought only he knew the words to.  Somehow, Letta knows them too.  From that moment, he's determined to prove to her that despite their youth and all of obstacles in their way, that they belong together - now and forever.  
 
But all orphans know how cruel the world can really be.  One mistake can change your path forever. And true love is worth sacrificing everything for.  

Life was like music; if you changed a single note, you changed the entire song. Mino had made mistakes. He had hurt those he cared for and given up too soon. He had been a fool, a coward, a failure—and if he hadn’t been each of those things in precisely the ways he had, he wouldn’t be standing on this bridge right now with Letta and the other half of his token in his hand.

​​The Orphan’s Song is a haunting tale of devotion and sacrifice.  In her first historical novel, Lauren Kate’s one-of-a-kind dreamlike prose brings her characters to vivid life. Even the city of Venice becomes a character itself - shimmering with promise and deception. 
 
​Every nuance – from the music to the heartbreak – blends together exquisitely to make this an experience that fans both old and new will devour.  And now I count myself amongst them…

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