The Amalfi Curse by Sarah Penner Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical romance, magical realism, romantic suspense, timeslip fiction, witches
Pages: 336
Published by Park Row Books on April 29, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads
“Sarah Penner transported me to the sea-swept cliffs of Positano and introduced me to characters I’ll never forget. A magical read!”—Emilia Hart, New York Times bestselling author of The Sirens
Powerful witchcraft. A hunt for sunken treasure. Forbidden love on the high seas. Beware the Amalfi Curse…
Haven Ambrose, a trailblazing nautical archaeologist, has come to the sun-soaked village of Positano to investigate the mysterious shipwrecks along the Amalfi Coast. But Haven is hoping to find more than old artifacts beneath the azure waters; she is secretly on a quest to locate a trove of priceless gemstones her late father spotted on his final dive. Upon Haven’s arrival, strange maelstroms and misfortunes start plaguing the town. Is it nature or something more sinister at work?
As Haven searches for her father’s sunken treasure, she begins to unearth a centuries-old tale of ancient sorcery and one woman’s quest to save her lover and her village by using the legendary art of stregheria, a magical ability to harness the ocean. Could this magic be behind Positano’s latest calamities? Haven must unravel the Amalfi Curse before the region is destroyed forever…
Against the dazzling backdrop of the Amalfi Coast, this bewitching novel shimmers with mystery, romance and the untamed magic of the sea.
My Review:
I picked this up for two reasons. First, because I enjoyed both of the author’s previous books, The Lost Apothecary and The London Séance Society. It seemed like she was on an upward trajectory as far as my reading was concerned as I liked the second book a bit better than the first, which perhaps I should have paid a bit more attention to.
Which led directly to my picking up her short story, The Conjurer’s Wife, earlier this year. While I didn’t like that quite as much as the novels, I did have a great time with the audiobook AND it contained a bit of a teaser for THIS book. It takes place at the same time as the historical part of The Amalfi Curse, so when the villain of that piece cast rather covetous eyes on a painting of the red-haired witches of Positano and it was clear that what he coveted was not the women as sexual objects but rather as vessels of power that he was sure he could use – for all the terrible definitions of that word – it left me intrigued about this book.
As it turns out, while the villainous conjurer of that short story does not make an appearance in The Amalfi Curse, villainous men of exactly his type absolutely do – and in both timelines. He’d have fit right in and that’s NOT a compliment.
This story, as is true for the author’s debut novel (Apothecary) but not her second (Séance), is a timeslip story. It tells its story of both danger and romance in the present AND in a distant-but-not-too-distant past. In this case, now and two centuries ago, linked by location and danger and inheritance – in that order.
In the present, nautical archaeologist Haven Ambrose and her team of all-female colleagues are converging on Positano for a project that will make ALL of their careers. The Amalfi coast off Positano has been a ships’ graveyard for centuries, to the point where the wrecks are so jumbled together that it’s been impossible to make sense of the puzzle for archaeological purposes – until now. Well, hopefully now, as this is the first major test of the cutting edge scanning equipment they will be utilizing.
Haven also has a personal reason for pursuing this project. Her father’s last dive was among the wrecks off Positano, and he discovered a cache of treasure that he was never able to bring up. On his deathbed, Haven promised that she’d bring that treasure up – not for the money – but for the discovery itself and the knowledge that would come with it.
It’s that treasure that links Haven’s story in the present to Mari’s trials and tribulations in 1821. Mari was the leader of the ‘streghe del mare di Positano’, the witches of Positano who protected their fishing village from the vicissitudes of the sea and the villains who sailed upon her with the witchcraft born in their blood.
The stories are linked, not directly through that shared blood, but rather through the ship whose wreck Haven plans to explore and the treasure she expects to find. But just as there are villains in Mari’s 19th century who have nefarious plans to take the witches’ power for themselves, there are villains in the 21st who intend to steal Haven’s work and her prize right out from under her.
And in both timelines, those villains have hidden in plain sight for years among the women’s own families.
Unexpectedly, The Amalfi Curse turned out to be a story about karma. And has often been said, she’s a bitch. But this time, at least, she’s on the side of females just like herself with power and the ability to use it – even if it’s not the same power at all.
Escape Rating B-: I enjoyed The London Séance Society rather a lot, so I came into this with high hopes that should have been a bit tempered by remembering that Séance was not a timeslip story. Because this is.
A LOT happens in both timelines in this story, and the parallels between Mari’s story and Haven’s come in at surprisingly different angles – but that’s also part of the reason for that B- grade. It takes each side of this story time to build and reach out towards the other, so the first half of the story moves slowly.
I adored the research angle of much of Haven’s side of the story – as I always love a good research quest done well – which this was. At the same time, the villainous nature of the villains in Haven’s story was screamingly obvious from the very beginning, to the point where it was never a question of ‘if’ – only ‘when’ and how much sabotage they would do to her in the process.
Mari’s betrayal, at least, came from an angle I wasn’t expecting. After all, one expects rapacious pirates to be, well, rapacious pirates. One does not expect a member of one’s family to be in league with said rapacious pirates. So that was definitely as big a surprise to me as it was to Mari.
While the way that each side of the story gathers towards its climax and the reveal of how they connect, the romances in the different timelines were a bit uneven. Mari’s romance with Holmes forms the backbone of the story, because we see it through Holmes’ surviving diary and it’s beautifully romantic even as he tells it. Howsomever and in contrast, Haven’s romance with Enzo in the present was a bit insta-love to the point where one could wonder if it was magically induced – and it could have been.
Overall, there were a lot of fascinating elements to this story, and once it gets past the halfway point it really takes off in both timelines. But for this reader, I had high hopes that didn’t quite get met, and it didn’t feel like it was the right book at the right time. Your reading mileage – even measured in nautical miles – may vary.
Nice review, Marlene. I found it slow to start, but once it got going, I was right into it. I enjoyed reading your thoughts.