The Marriage Portrait

A friend loaned me The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell for my spring break trip. While the number of books I brought was rather ambitious, I did hang on to this one so I could read it. This book is set in Florence in the 1500s. Lucrezia is set to marry an older man who was originally supposed to marry her older sister. The book follows her through the first year of her marriage, which is the only year of her marriage. It is interesting and hard to watch Lucrezia as she settles into her new life. There are so many things the reader gets to learn with her about her new life. You know something awful is coming, and that sense of dread builds through the entire book. It was really well written and makes me excited to read Hamnet.