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 Hardcover: 368 pages
Publisher: William Morrow (April 7, 2020)

From the New York Times, USA Today, and internationally bestselling author of the Angelology series comes a bewitching gothic novel of suspense that plunges readers into a world of dark family secrets, the mysteries of human genetics, and the burden of family inheritance.

It feels like a fairy tale when Alberta ”Bert” Monte receives a letter addressed to “Countess Alberta Montebianco” at her Hudson Valley, New York, home that claims she’s inherited a noble title, money, and a castle in Italy. While Bert is more than a little skeptical, the mystery of her aristocratic family’s past, and the chance to escape her stressful life for a luxury holiday in Italy, is too good to pass up.

At first, her inheritance seems like a dream come true: a champagne-drenched trip on a private jet to Turin, Italy; lawyers with lists of artwork and jewels bequeathed to Bert; a helicopter ride to an ancestral castle nestled in the Italian Alps below Mont Blanc; a portrait gallery of ancestors Bert never knew existed; and a cellar of expensive vintage wine for Bert to drink.

But her ancestry has a dark side, and Bert soon learns that her family history is particularly complicated. As Bert begins to unravel the Montebianco secrets, she begins to realize her true inheritance lies not in a legacy of ancestral treasures, but in her very genes.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

Listen to me, child. I saw it. The beast came for me on the mountain pass like a ghost with its white hair and devilish blue eyes. Its teeth were sharp as razors. But worst of all, it was so like us. Monstrous and yet so human. The legends were true.

… inheritance is a trickster. One generation may hide its genetic treasures, while the next will put them fully on display.

Leopold had described the village as a seed pressed into a rocky furrow, and it seemed exactly that: a furtive garden in a fold of stone.

How strange it felt, to sit there so openly, my feet exposed. A lifetime of hiding them had made me self-conscious to the point of neurosis. But there was no reason to hide my feet from these people.

My Review:

The Ancestor was a bracing and chilling tale of an epic legacy of dark secrets and unknown wealth hidden in the ice and snow.   While not my typical read, I was quickly pulled into an oddly captivating vortex of unnerving and itchy intrigue. It was easy to follow, highly creative, monstrously eerie, and the most distressing part was that it was conceivably plausible. Despite feeling edgy, unsettled, and nibbling on my cuticles – I was enslaved by my curiosity and unable to put my Kindle down.

The narrative was richly textured, cunningly conceived, and maddeningly paced. I was engrossed and conflicted while I cycled between feeling appalled and entranced.   To illustrate Ms. Trussoni’s exceptional word voodoo, I was mentally frostbitten by her descriptive depictions of the harsh Alpine weather that entrenched the beset characters while in reality, I was barefoot, clad in shorts, and comfortably lounging with an open window and ceiling fan on a balmy day in the tropics. She has mad skills.

I was provided with a review copy of this oddly compelling tale by TLC Book Tours and HarperCollins.