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Bella Donna

Who It’s For

If you like Eyes Wide Shut, The Piano Teacher, Damage, or Story of the Eye, you’ll enjoy Bella Donna.

"This was the life I wanted, yet Gio... Gio was what my soul yearned for.
All of him. He was like the best book ever written, drawing me into a world where he was the hero. I couldn’t resist the urge to keep reading. To turn the pages of this never-ending story, despite knowing it will teach me the forbidden truth; being wrong. I was spellbound, obsessed with continuing, desperate to live through every sentence, every word. I wanted to be part of his story, to be woven into his narrative." P189

Read the full review here

What It’s About

Bella Donna is a dark, intimate story about a woman pulled back into a past she thought she’d buried. Donna returns to her family’s seaside resort for Christmas. Her life in Paris, teaching literature, living with her boyfriend Tom, seems calm and settled.
 

But everything shifts when she sees Gio again. He’s her father’s best friend. Her teen crush. He’s older. And sixteen years ago, something almost happened between them. Now he’s back. And Donna finds herself drawn to him again...dangerously so.

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Themes & Tone

  • A sharp yet positive psychological portrait of erotic obsession and emotional collapse

  • A spare, precise voice that hides nothing and forgives no one

  • A story about control, submission, and the silence between sex and ruin

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Why You’ll Care
Bella Donna is for readers who want fiction that burns slowly and leaves scars. It doesn’t offer answers—only the quiet violence of wanting too much.

Paige Johnson - Author

“This would be a good companion piece for those who enjoyed My Dark Vanessa but wanted something lighter, almost a flipside where the girl is still in the euphoric throes of "grooming" she sought to accelerate."

Christopher Anderson

"Its hauntingly romantic nature evokes a delightful sense of nostalgia that will linger long after you turn the final page."

Reader

“ It pulls our feelings about serious adult love as well as adolescent innocence."

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