A debut romance novel about a priest’s forbidden love for an aspiring singer.Palumbo delivers a variation on the tried-and-true priest-in-love template that’s been serving novelists for more than 150years, ever since Charles Reade’s 1861 novel, The Cloister and the Hearth. The plot revolves around handsome, newlyordained Catholic priest Matteo da Luca, who’s had a love of singing ever since he was a small boy in Australia and whobrings that love to his first parish assignment in Highgate, Perth, Western Australia, in 1975, as the novel begins.There, he meets a young woman named Emily Grey and is struck by her beauty and her passion for song. In the novel’s early stages, Emily is a law student at the University of Western Australia, but she soon decides to change career paths and concentrate on a singing career, hiring a famous tutor and dreaming of making a living with her voice. When Father Matteo’s superior, the archbishop, notices the pair’s superb vocal abilities, he seeks to arrange a recital for the two of them. However, he’s careful to remind Father Matteo of his relationship with Jesus and the church, which takes precedence over any possible romantic entanglements.Such reminders are always wasted in this type of novel, though, and Palumbo’s book is no different; the passion between Father Matteo and Emily is undeniable, even as they try to sublimate it into their shared love of music. Still, the author manages to shape this recognizable pattern into a leisurely but effective drama. Most of thesecondary characters feel underdeveloped, and there are moments of wooden, unnatural dialogue: “It seems that you and Emily are inextricably bound together by your singing,” says the archbishop, for instance, in casual conversation. However, Palumbo’s dramatic instincts are pointed, and he brings the third act of his story to a gripping and surprising conclusion.Even readers who know this subgenre very well will find this a diverting read. An often familiar but touching story of love and difficult choices.Kirkus
