Review: Dating Da Vinci by Malena Lott.

Hero: ??
Heroine: Ramona Elise Griffen (Mona Lisa)
Grade: 4.75 out of 5

A gorgeous young Italian, with nowhere to go… His name just happens to be Leonardo da Vinci. When he walks into Ramona Elise’s English class, he’s a twenty-five yhear old immigrant, struggling to forget a new life in America but he’s lonely, has nowhere to live, and barely speaks English… She knows she shouldn’t take him home… Picking up the pieces of her life after the death of her beloved husband, linguist and teacher Ramona Elise can’t help but be charmed by her gorgeous new student. And when he calls her “Mona Lisa” she’s jsut about to lose her heart …

This book was good right from the very first page. It was one of those books that I read the blurb and thought, hmm maybe I’ll like this and then I read it and think, man I really, really liked this book. It was so easy to fall into and just a pleasure to read that I’m kinda sad that I finished it so fast. I didn’t have time to savor the characters because my greedy eyes wanted to read it all and take it all in and man, I really, really liked this book.

The book is about Ramona Elise Griffen getting her groove back. It’s been two years since her husband died and she’s got a lot of unanswered questions and issues that she’s got to go through in order to truly let him go and move on with her life. She’s got two little boys and she’s functioned because of them but she hasn’t really been alive in the real sense of the word since Joel, her late husband died. Then one day, she goes to work (she’s a linguist and she’s an English teacher, who teaches immigrants how to speak English) and her roll sheet says she’s got a Leonardo da Vinci in her class, not the ancient guy but a real, modern day da Vinci and she’s a little excited except he’s not there when she takes roll so she starts class without him and then when he finally turns up, he’s not at all what she expected him to look like because he’s young and extremely hot.

He’s hot and extremely charming and the next thing Ramona knows, she’s inviting him to stay in Joel’s old studio because he needed a place to stay and she becomes his safe haven at the same time that he becomes hers.

This book was one of those books where the main character (in this case, Ramona) grows emotionally and becomes a very strong person at the end. You can see at the beginning that she’s leading a very chaotic life, which is hard to lead on any given day but when you’ve just lost your husband and you’re grieving like crazy, it can be even more chaotic and that’s pretty much the way that Ramona is living her life. She’s got some crazy regrets as far as her husband goes, she’s got some unsettled emotions that won’t let her move on and she’s got her two little boys to care for, her matchmaking Mom and Mother in Law who wants to see her happy again. So we start off, seeing Ramona trying to just get by and as the book wore on, we see her come back to the world of living one step at a time and at times it felt like she was slowly progressing and you just wanted to yank her into the present and keep her safely out of the past because that’s pretty much what she was doing, she couldn’t let go of the past so she didn’t have much of a future.

I was glad that da Vinci helped her come back to life. I was glad that he could open her eyes to the life that she was missing out on and I was glad that he was there for her but from the very beginning, I didn’t like him for Ramona. Not only were they too different, they just didn’t fit well together. He was a good friend to her but I didn’t see sky rockets where these two were concerned.

All in all, this book was an extremely well written story that captivated me from the very beginning. I fell in love with the characters and Ramona’s journey. I was glad that all of her questions were answered and I was glad that her love for Joel wasn’t something that she’d ever forget and I just really, really enjoyed this story. I will definitely be reading more by Ms. Lott and I’m happy to have been given the chance to read this one.

A really good read, I definitely recommend this book for those lazy weekends when a good book is all that’s needed to make the weekend a good one.

This book is available from Sourcebooks Publishing. You can buy it here.

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