Tito Amato and his friend Felice are returning to his place of birth,the city of Venice after finishing his training as a singer and his feelings on seeing his old home are mixed. He is different from other young men his since he is a castrato singer after an "accident" in his youth

He is welcomed by his sister with joy but his father shows him the cold shoulder and his younger sister suffers from mysterious attacks.All is not well with his family.

In contrast his career is off to a splendid start and going very well until the reigning prima donna is murdered by poison The prime suspect is his friend Felice and now he has 5 Days to prove hes innocent or the penalty will prove very harsh. read:execution.

I Went into this hoping that it would be one of those books that are so awesome it just makes you remember it and also the 18th Century is a favorite era of mine so it was all set to be that.

I did find the idea of a castrato hero intriguing and the author showed delicacy while Writing about the feelings and plight of maincharacter.People either held him in awe or disgust or in some cases showed an unhealthy interest in him because of his affliction.

At times the Writing style reminded me of the Falco series by [a:Lindsey Davis|24844|Lindsey Davis|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1269886022p2/24844.jpg].But while those books also have their dark moments there its relieved by some light moments and dry wit. Interrupted aria was just too bleak and I felt the mystery as it was got sidestepped in favor of going into lenghty detail of the finer points of opera and singing techniques that dragged it down.

The ending was also a downer and had me depressed because of what happened to his sister. :( ( )

Surprisingly good. A friend loaned this to and I found it to be a very nice little mystery read. I find the character of Tito very endearing. There are more books in the series and I will move forward with them. ( )

This is an historical mystery, set in Venice in the 1730s. The main character is a castrato, a young man who was deliberately castrated when he was young to insure his voice would stay high and pure.

I really wanted to like this book a lot. Venice is one of my favorite locations, and the castrati are interesting to read about. Unfortunately this book just lacked something. It was very easy to put down, not compelling enough for me to pick it back up. It took me 6 days to read 282 pages.

What did stand out for me was the shallow or immature tone of the writing. It struck me as a YA level book. Some YA books are complex and well written, others are not. This was one of the latter.

I just didn't find the characters all that interesting, they lacked depth, motivation, and shades of grey. Tito was too perfect, Annetta was the cliched goody, goody older sister. Alessandro just appeared and had no real shading at all. The father was cold and mysterious, but had no real personality other than a stern bullying man who was never satisfied. They thought back to the days when their mother was alive as 'better times'. But the father wouldn't have been different then, so he would have been the fly in the ointment, except he wasn't. It marred the reality the author was trying to create. The younger sister was too obviously the center of the mystery, except to the characters.

Characters outside the family are full of love one minute and then full of hate. They act extremely one way, and then extremely the opposite. Those that aren't moved by wild emotions are bland. The supposed bad guys are just as bland as the walk ons.

The story was rather pedestrian, until the end. The evil actions were all recounted as a tale from one character to the others, rather than events for which the reader is present. As a mystery it was mildly interesting, though full of miracles. The story of how Tito was castrated was another mystery, and it was just a straightforward throw-away, as was the conclusion to the father.

The glimpses we got of life behind the scenes at the opera, and dallying in high society, are all stock cliches, with nothing new to say or reveal.

Everything was wrapped up too neatly to be true to life or real people. Perhaps the story and the writing lacked grit? It was too smooth and never touched my emotions.

I thought she tried to do the setting justice but seemed to think all she needed were canals and gondoliers.

This is a first book, so I may give her second book a try, but I am not in any rush. ( )