Sunday, August 18, 2013

My Super Sweet Sixteenth Century (My Super Sweet Sixteenth Century #1) by Rachel Harris

My Super Sweet Sixteenth Century (My Super Sweet Sixteenth Century #1) 
Rachel Harris
260 pages
Publisher: Entangled Teen
Release Date: September 18th, 2012
Rate: Loved it



"Caterina, a great adventure is in store for you."



Cat Crawford is the daughter of an actress with problems with fidelity and tends to be in all the gossip tabloids. Everyone expects her to be like her mother, expecting something crazy going on with her, but instead their find a boring version of her mother. So that's why she needs to be perfect all the time, trying to avoid being her mother.
However, her mother is not her only problem. Her soon-to-be-stepmother is. Her insistence in organizing her a big sweet sixteen party that will be on MTV is and the fact that she changed her father is even more frustrating.
But being in Florence as a gift from her father after her diabolical sweet sixteen party is calming Cat's nerves, so she has promised to embrace every bit of the Italian magic that the city offers. What wasn't expecting is that a part of that magic would make her wake up in the sixteenth century in her mother's ancestors house.
As Patiente D'Angeli, she meets sweet Alessandra, Less as she nicknames her, Less' protective brother, Cipriano and Cip's best friend and gorgeous italian artist, Lorenzo. Cat brings a spark that only a girl from the twenty first century could bring to this unusual group of friends and they end up learning a lot about her. 
However Cat also learns a lot from her adventure. Like when Niccolo appears in the D'Angeli house asking to marry Patience, she cannot run away. She cannot choose to stay with the boy she loves or choose not to marry and that party that she was willing to scape in the twenty first century seems to have followed her to the sixteenth and with much worse consequences than being on the MTV.


"I do not know what a dude is, but the gentleman in question is Lorenzo, Cipriano's best friend." She glances back at the boys, now visible again. "He is an impressive artist, and he comes from one of the wealthiest families in all of Florence."



Right now, I need to recover from the sadness Rachel Harris put me in. I'm not saying I didn't like the book, I loved it, but my heart aches for Cat. 
What Rachel Harris did was a wonderful job. She wrote a time travel story, describing perfectly the details of the life in the sixteenth century without leaving a twenty first century spark in it. It's the first time travel story that my heart is aching for. 
At first, we see a glimpse of Cat's life in the twenty first century. Both her parents famous, her mother a little bit more for her scandalous life, she's trapped with playing the role of perfect daughter. She doesn't want to be like her mother and be in the tabloid with a new scandal every day, so she measures her movements to the millimeter, always searching for the paparazzi. And adding to her dramatic life, her father has a new girlfriend, soon-to-be-stepmother that has changed her father making Cat wonder If he's still her father.
Then, in her sixteenth century life, she lives and adventure as promised by the gypsy girl. She rocks the world of the sixteenth characters as well as they leave an unmistakable mark in her. It's nice to see how she tries to convince Less to pursue her dreams in her mind, without thinking she's the evil or she's sinning. She also makes her now serious cousin to smile and makes womanizer Lorenzo to fall for her like she is the air he needs to breathe to survive. But also she learns how to make friends and the value of having them and she learns that her life could be worse, that she could be actually in Patience's skin forever: live in the shadow of her husband and forced to marry a man that she doesn't love at the young age of sixteen.
As for the other characters that Cat meets in her journey, there's her cousin Alessandra, Less. She's sweet, noble and a good person. She's the kind of person I would like to have as family or as a friend. She has big dreams, not appropriate for the century she lives in, and Cat brings her the courage that she needs to achieve it, only if it means for one evening and surrounded by her friends. Although we do not have the pleasure to read from her point of view, at least not in this book, we get the feeling that she admires Cat, her bravery and her indomitable and strange attitude.
Cipriano is another type of character. It shows what the duty of the man of the house was in that century and that not always they got the jobs of their dreams. He's sad and serious for having to leave Florence to work elsewhere, and the presence of Cat brings the spark that he missed. We really like him. Specially when he laughs at Cat when Nicolo asks her if she sings. I was laughing a lot in that scene.
And we cannot forget lovely and womanizer Lorenzo. The attraction he and Cat felt for each other was instantaneous, but was not the desperate one. Although he's known to make all the girls fall in love with him and then dump them, changes the instant Cat tries not to fall for him. However, I personally think that he really starts to consider not being able to live without her the moment Cat tells him he's also an artist. That was like watching an insta-connection between the two of them.
With lots of fun in the story, like reading a conversation where the sixteenth century people try to talk words from the twenty first century or when Cat sings in front of an audience, and the mix of romance and adventure were the scenes that made this book so catchy.
It was a fascinating experience to be in Rachel Harris' sixteenth century story. With a dose of Renaissance culture, an artist stroke, true love and a little bit of gypsy magic, Rachel Harris wrote a wonderful, captivating and "not able to stop reading" story that would make you have no regrets by reading it.
This is why we are giving this magical story a five gorjuss dolls.









Gabriella Wild as Cat
Douglas Booth as Lorenzo
Astrid Bergès-Frisbey as Alessandra
Grant Gustin as Cipriano



What do you think, Book Addicts?

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