I really didn't enjoy this book. This was another novel that I wished was over before long, and there was just so much not to like about it.

The characters were confusing. Too many people were introduced too quickly, and with Francesca's relationship with them they were all just patrons to me - I couldn't tell most of them apart. Their personalities were boring or annoying, and the author relies too much on monologue to make it a good read. When characters were mentioned later on, I couldn't remember them nor did I care to. So many emotions were exaggerated and written very poorly, especially angst, that I got sick of things really quickly (like Francesca's desperation in wanting Luca, and Modesto's crying about his circumstance).

The constant spatters of foreign language were annoying, and they were mostly poorly used. It made no sense to use them even sparingly when the English would've done just as well - especially when I had no idea what the word was supposed to mean.

I cringed at the writing, too. So many sentences were unnecessary. Things were described that weren't important to the setting or the plot at all (like what Francesca took on her picnic, and the order in which she did things). There was nothing beautiful about the writing, either, and the book might've been better if it was finely tuned.

There was a surprising lack of sex written considering that the novel was about a courtesan, and a ridiculous amount of romance for a novel that didn't feel like a romance at all - it felt like the writer trying to bash me over the head with the fact that a whore deserves to be loved, too.

The constant authorial messages than shone through the text were annoying, too. Regardless of if they belonged to the author or not, it felt like the novel was trying to school me into a specific way of thinking. Instead of being about a courtesan, the novel was full of moral lessons at every corner - lessons that could've at least been taught with a less heavy hand.

The plot was uninteresting, and it felt like a last minute decision to turn the novel in the direction it did. The plot points before it did not point to Francesca wanting to quit her life as a courtesan, and I didn't care much whether she did or not (in fact, I felt that her attraction to Luca was infatuation and her reasoning for quitting boring). The rest of the book was annoyingly predictable, too, to the point that I if I abandoned it I would've already known the ending (and I wouldn't have regretted not knowing even if I didn't).

The lack of interest I had in the book really ruined it for me. The same plot may have been done better were it approached differently, but all I got was a badly written novel about a confident whore who turned into a pathetic woman when faced with the notion of love.