Meredith: My Super Sweet Sixteenth Century by Rachel Harris

 

On the precipice of her sixteenth birthday, the last thing lone wolf Cat Crawford wants is an extravagant gala thrown by her bubbly stepmother-to-be and well-meaning father. So even though Cat knows the family’s trip to Florence, Italy, is a peace offering, she embraces the magical city and all it offers. But when her curiosity leads her to an unusual gypsy tent, she exits . . . right into Renaissance Firenze.

Thrust into the sixteenth century armed with only a backpack full of contraband future items, Cat joins up with her ancestors, the sweet Alessandra and protective Cipriano, and soon falls for the gorgeous aspiring artist Lorenzo. But when the much-older Niccolo starts sniffing around, Cat realizes that an unwanted birthday party is nothing compared to an unwanted suitor full of creeptastic amore.

Can she find her way back to modern times before her Italian adventure turns into an Italian forever?

 

 

I was suprisingly entertained by the book, considering how disenchanted I first was with both the cover and the title. I mean, come on. A pink backpack? I know that it was important, but it does not need to be on the cover.

 

My Super Sweet Sixteenth Century by Rachel Harris follows social outcast Cat Crawford, the daughter of a movie star and a director. Ten years after her mother's desertion, her father is remarrying to a bright, bubbly blonde woman named Jenna. Her father's fiancee wants to throw Cat a huge ball of a Sweet Sixteen, but Cat will hear nothing of it. That is... until her father offers to take her to Italy, a dream of hers for years.

 

However, after stumbling into a suspicious gypsy tent by the side of the road, she gets more Italian history lessons than she bargained for. She is thrust into the sixteenth century, right into the life of Patience, a girl traveling to her cousins' home after losing both her parents to sickness.

 

My Super Sweet Sixteenth Century had beautiful world building in it. The descriptions of Renaissance Italy left me in awe. Rachel Harris has been bestowed with the beautiful gift of description.

 

The same cannot be said of the characters. While her cousin Alessandra was without a doubt my favorite character, the rest left something to be desired. Lorenzo, the love interest, is perfect. So perfect, in fact, to the point of being a Gary-Sue. He has gorgeous brown eyes and golden locks; his personality is gentlemanly and he is sweet, funny, kind, and sarcastic. Her aunt and uncle both have the same emotions throughout the entire book. Cat was, of course, astoundingly beautiful. Do ugly people never find love?

 

And of course, there's Niccolo: a forty-year-old looker who is kind and polite and ready to find a wife. Naturally, being from the twenty-first century, Cat is disgusted by all the girls her age vying for his attention.

 

The only point that really bothered me about this book was the fact that everyone just seemed too perfect. Cat is beautiful and immediately falls for sexy Lorenzo before even getting to know him. Hormones, much?

 

My rating:

three and a half out of five stars