Graceless Heart by Isabel Ibañez Review

As a sculptress, Ravenna Maffei has always shaped beauty from stone but she has a terrible secret. Desperate to save her brother, she enters a competition hosted by Florence’s most feared immortal family, revealing a dark power in a city where magic is forbidden.
 

Now a captive in the cutthroat city of Florence, Ravenna is forced into a dangerous task where failure meets certain death at the hands of Saturnino dei Luni, the immortal family's mesmerizing but merciless heir. But as he draws her closer, Ravenna realizes the true threat lies beyond Florence’s walls.
 

The Pope’s war against magic is closing in, and Ravenna is no longer just a prisoner but a prize to be claimed. As trusting the wrong person becomes lethal, Ravenna must survive the treacherous line between a pope's obsession and the seductive immortal who might be the end of her — or surrender her power to a city on the brink of war.

This review is based on a complimentary Advanced Reader Copy provided by Saturday Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Press via Netgalley.

A fantasy-inspired historical fiction story based around one of Florence’s most tumultuous periods in the 15th century, Isabel Ibañez’s debut adult novel Graceless Heart is a romantasy book full of interesting ideas. It features a resilient and independent female main character in a patriarchal dominated era marked by a political power struggle as well as the flourishing of the arts. Beautifully written and full of Italian flavor, the book’s great potential is unfortunately hindered by its uncertain commitment to what it wants to be and inconsistent pacing. I struggled to stay invested in the somewhat sparse story for most of the read before it devolves into a haphazard third act.

Cleverly set within one of the Republic of Florence’s most colorful historical periods, Graceless Heart’s biggest asset and noteworthy element is its homage to the Italian setting and the excitement of the Renaissance era that runs throughout the course of the book. From snippets of Italian phrases to its vibrantly described visuals, from the get-go, the book feels distinctive amongst the numerous romantasy/fantasy romance novels constantly being pushed out. Initially presenting the ancient town of Volterra that contrasts the more urban center of Florence, the book makes full use of all the historic Tuscany region’s notoriety. Its food, to extravagant fashion, ancient architecture, and lively atmosphere, the ambiance of the story is great.

Pitched as historical fiction story in addition to a fantasy one, Graceless Heart’s setting is a deliberate choice to feature and retell some of the region’s most notable moments, primarily the Pazzi conspiracy. A fascinating story in of itself, the historical fiction elements serve as gripping source material for Ibañez to work off of, not only for the event’s difficult to believe developments but also for a fun Leonardo da Vinci cameo appearance for those that have no knowledge of Italian history. Despite featuring the iconic artist, the story instead focuses on stone sculpting work rather than painting that’s a unique skillset different from the typical fantasy fair of alchemy, dark academia, spell weaving, etc.

In addition to having compelling historical fiction elements and colorful visuals, Graceless Heart’s other biggest selling point is Ibañez’s writing itself. Beautifully composed and varied in its approach to even mundane activities, her writing chops certainly enhance the story and adds a level of sophistication to what is otherwise a simple fantasy retelling of historic events.

Unfortunately, despite its compelling historical fiction source material and interesting blend of fantasy elements, the execution of the story itself is a bit of a mess, and it often feels like the book isn’t sure what it wants to be. For the first three quarters of the book, the story feels very romantasy heavy that follows an enemies-to-lovers arc and the special one that makes the cold male love interest feel warm. That in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing. The problem is that for most of the book, it feels like Ibañez is working off a popular romantasy trope checklist and trying to shoehorn as many elements in there as possible. There’s forbidden and shunned magic, there’s the touch her and you die trope, there’s the cold and edgy threat in a sexy lean package, unwilling kidnapping, fae/vampires/wizards, never mind that each’s inclusion ignores each magical being’s existing mythology and has little relevance to the story, and of course it must have a cat! These common elements aren’t bad on their own, but here they feel thrown in for the sake of mass appeal on top of very quick and excessive insta-lust staring that undermines the rest of the story. Throughout most of my read, it felt like the romantasy elements were constantly interrupting what little plot the story had going on (a concerning note considering how compelling the historical fiction material is) and the book ultimately wasting so much time on irrelevant content. Despite coming in at almost 500 pages, it feels like very little is happening, and the pacing feels like moving at a glacial pace. Despite having a very promising start based on history and a good premise with Ravenna’s sculpting talents, so much of the book is just her complaining while chiseling stone without accomplishing much or being in a constant state of surprise and betrayal from those around her, more on that shortly.

In addition to its baffling lack of focus, what makes the reading experience feel so much worse is the character writing, development, and dialogue. While marketed as Ibañez’s adult novel debut, across the board nearly everything related to Graceless Heart’s characters are handled with a YA touch. The character logic is very juvenile and various characters’ reactions and dialogue sound like that of teenagers rather than adults, which is a major issue considering some of these characters are meant to be older adults, seniors, or possibly even immortal. Without giving away spoilers, the villainous characters’ internalized thoughts, dialogue, and unironic self-monologue are unintentionally comical with how cliched and over the top they’re written much like a caricature of a kid’s cartoon (The Pope and the Lumi family being the most egregious, especially Marco). The already slow pacing of the story further suffers due to the decision to feature multiple points of views. The book doesn’t feature fully split POV’s, opting to alternate chapters between side characters to give the story and world more context, but the multiple POV’s seem to hinder the reading experience instead. Most of these chapters feel like unnecessary tangents from the main story while the details that are actually relevant contain information that would’ve been better left unknown to the reader for added suspense or for them to piece together on their own. There’s a notable lack of tension despite Florence being at risk of war simply due to the reader knowing what every character is thinking and knowing how they’re probably going to act. I feel like the POV’s likely were also intended to give side characters more of a backstory for the reader to empathize with, but the material feels quite lackluster and trite, the novel likely being better off without them.

The weak and YA style character writing unfortunately also extends to its main characters Ravenna and Saturnino. While Ravenna is pitched to be a strong, independent, and resourceful female main character in the face of a male dominated society, the plotting of the story does her a huge disservice by constantly having her in a state of shock or betrayal in rather simple and expected situations. Outside of its romantasy lean, Graceless Heart’s story is a political power struggle between different factions and families, with Ravenna stuck in the middle of them. To stay alive and protect her family, she is forced to strategize deals and compromises with others around her, acting as a double or triple agent all while managing her terrifying and deathly magical powers. The biggest issue with that is most of the book’s plot twists, strategizing, and power plays are very predictable, the verbal negotiating being nowhere near as smart as Ibañez likely intended them to seem (Ravenna constantly accuses Saturnino of lying or breaking his promises, yet the loopholes she overlooks or omission of details he skips are dreadfully obvious to everyone but her). Consequently, I found Ravenna to be difficult to root for due to her repetitively tiring shock at new developments while her confidence and independent arrogance feeling unearned and off-putting given her repeatedly poor decision-making. As the story progresses, the events revolving around Ravenna’s character stretch the limits of plausibility, particularly her demands made in deals, given that she’s in no position of power outside of Saturnino’s required obsession and protection of her per romantasy trope obligations.

On the other hand, Saturnino’s character feels like a chimera of romantasy tropes meshed together for the sake of mass appeal and marketing. Cold, dangerous, dark-haired, lean and handsome, possibly immortal or possibly fae (this one in feels thrown for buzz word marketing), his various character traits and personality feel very generic by design to hit all of MMC must-haves. Worse, his character constantly flip flops his personality and interests based on the needs of Ravenna and the romance story. Initially cold, calculated and unapproachable, the abrupt 180 into a charming and alluring figure that constantly winks at her feels just plain silly, even though the book attempts to back it up as a purposeful act to win her over. Isolated, guarded and pessimistic about his future, his character completely changes his tune a mere two chapters later suddenly longing for a life with Ravenna as well as marriage. There’s a recurring theme of being emotionless vs the feelings of being human, but it’s heavy-handed at best with nowhere near enough character development or notable revelation to plausibly spur such wild swings in characterization. Due to the book’s YA maturity level and Saturnino’s inconsistent nature, their chemistry never really feels connected, the slow burn narrative lacking in romantic content, and the enemies-to-lovers jump is very abrupt. While the book does have two open-door bedroom scenes and lusty wandering eyes, the rest of the romance has the development and depth feels more like a teenage romance and all the romantic moments are concentrated in the already cluttered last 30% of the book. On top of that, Saturnino really feels like a stand-in for whatever the perceived perfect dark romantasy boyfriend role expects, regardless of whether the proper setup is done or whether the situation even makes sense for the character.

While about 70% of the book has a slow pace and romantasy heavy focus, the story then abruptly shifts into flurry of plot twists almost as if the book suddenly remembered it needed to finish out the historical fiction and fantasy elements it introduced. Though the real historical events Graceless Heart is based off of are more or less represented in-tact, the execution feels almost haphazardly thrown together in a rush. Plot twist after plot twist occurs but due to the lack of setup or foreshadowing, they come off as baffling and random instead of shocking like Ravenna’s reactions would suggest. Connections between characters, affiliations, new magic rules and conditions, it almost feels like Ibañez is making stuff up on the fly to try and close out the story quick, sometimes having characters flip flop their psyche or aspirations in order to make the plot work. Worse, the little explanation provided is presented as info dumping by Saturnino, the book guilty of “telling” vs “showing” because there’s too much ground in too little time that should’ve been gradually incorporated throughout the book. For example, a glossary of magic stones powers is provided for reference, yet only one has any direct relevance to the story and another has a single sentence appearance in the whole book vs the others are barely even named. The introductory preamble mentions magical beings being pushed to the fringes of the country, yet for all narrative purposes none of them need exist at all except for witches (a last minute plot twist involving the identify of a character being a magical being was so random and meaningless). There were select moments in the book’s final chapters that caused me to laugh out loud not because they were intentionally funny, but because they were borderline absurd. Up until the last 30% of the book, my impression of the read was one that was lackluster and sedentary but generally inoffensive. However, the whiplash I got from the way the book’s ending and how nonsensical the plot became was too much to ignore and a severe issue with plotting.

Featuring a solid premise on paper combining good fantasy elements with compelling historical fiction source material, by all accounts Graceless Heart had the potential to be an exciting and unique read. Yet, the book’s attempt at meshing its historical elements with romantasy elements simply felt mishandled, the romantasy elements leaving much to be desired while its fantasy/history story a convoluted mess. Worse, the character development felt consistently poor while the internalized feelings and dialogue to be incredibly juvenile and silly. While Ibañez’s writing style outside of the spoken dialogue is lovely, the good presentation is not enough to make up for the questionable content it’s portraying. And that’s such a shame because the ideas were there as well as the nature of the immortal characters, a unique concept. Fortunately, I believe Graceless Heart utilizes enough popular romantasy tropes to find its readers when it is published in a few months, not to mention the popularity of Ibañez’s duology Secrets of the Niles that I am looking to read myself. But for those that like an interesting story to go along with their romance, this one for me is a disappointing misfire.