Siracusa by Delia Ephron (Book) Spoilers

Siracusa by Delia Ephron

There will be spoilers in this post but it will be clearly marked.

 So I got this book Siracusa (by Delia Ephron) in my August Book of the Month Club shipment. (Link here) And I started reading it right away and it took me about a week to finish. The chapters are each told by a different character in the story.

Short description of plot: Two couples and one daughter go on a vacation to Italy and something dramatic happens at the end.


Longer description:
 The four main adult characters and the one teen character are: Finn, Taylor, Snow, Michael, and Lizzie. Side adult character Kath.

 Details about each character:
 -Finn: used to date Lizzie, married to Taylor, father of Snow. He is a restaurant owner.

 -Taylor: Married to Finn, mother of Snow. She works with the mayor's office in Portland, Maine on the city's tourism. She babies Snow and believes her to have extreme shyness syndrome. Can "decipher" what her daughter is trying to say even when no words are used.

 -Snow: a shy teenager, she goes through a transformation throughout the book - or maybe she was already like that but didn't show her true self until Italy.

 -Michael: Married to Lizzie, having an affair with Kath (you find out in Michael's first chapter about her so this isn't really a spoiler). He's written plays and is currently writing a play.

 -Lizzie: Married to Michael, used to date Finn. I think she's a freelance writer for newspapers and stuff but I don't really remember. She's the one who plans the Italy trip for the two couples.

 -Kath: Having an affair with Michael, she's the hostess at a restaurant Michael goes to frequently (where they met).

The story:
 The five main characters go to Italy on a vacation together, Rome is nice, Siracusa is next. Michael and Lizzie rekindle the romance in their relationship. Taylor is overprotective especially when Snow starts to be more engaged in her surroundings because of Michael (but Taylor not so secretly loves this). Snow is weird but that's the point. You're not supposed to be able to figure out what she's thinking. A mysterious thing that all of the online reviews mention happens. But you'll have to read the spoilers below to find out what it is. The spoilers will be clearly marked when it starts and ends. There will be some final thoughts afterwards. You'll see the "end spoilers" if you keep scrolling

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 Kath shows up on the trip. She surprises Michael in Siracusa. She used his plane miles by using her spare key into his office and accessing his password and other information. She gets a room at the same hotel as the rest of the group. And she makes him buy her a ring as a sign of commitment.

 Snow, who has been smitten with Michael this trip (not sure if romantic or as a father figure), finds out about the affair and allegedly pushes Kath onto the rocks by the sea. No one knows for sure but Kath is definitely dead.

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YOU CAN READ THIS PART IF YOU DON'T WANT SPOILERS!!

Final thoughts:
 I like when a book has chapters each based on a different day (like Dracula's journal format) or each is a different character narrating like this book is. It gives us multiple points of view of one situation and we can see how each of the characters interpret the situation.
 I can totally see the author writing this book from Snow's point of view. Her thoughts should be quite interesting since she barely speaks throughout the book.