As a writing convenience, setting up 1348 Florence as a hell if May were trapped is a good idea because it ratchets up the stakes for her to avoid being there. Middle Ages scholars may disagree with me, but I cannot figure out what appeal there would be in visiting a medieval city during a health crisis. Almost thirty years after the death of Dante and thirty years before the birth of Brunelleschi (whose famous dome is the modern image of the city), the only thing 1348 Florence has of interest it is its newly created republican government ….and the Bubonic Plague. 1348 is approximately the worst time in the second millennium to travel to Florence. What is peculiar in Plague in the Mirror is that there is almost no logical impetus to engage in the time travel. Time travel has been done so often that characters crossing into a world that ended before they were born doesn’t seem unusual. As much as May tries to get involved with her present life, she is preoccupied by the harm her historical twin may be doing in 1348, and wonders if being trapped in the midst of the Black Plague would be as bad as it seems. What seems like an interminably scholarly trip turns life-threatening when a doppelgänger from 1348 starts to haunt May and offer her a portal to Florence of the Middle Ages. May is spending the summer in Florence to avoid the shakeup of her parents’ divorce under the guise of helping a family friend research a travel guide. Lush with atmosphere both passionate and eerie, this evocative tale follows a girl on the brink of womanhood as she dares to transcend the familiar-and discovers her sensual power.
The wily Cristofana wants nothing less of May than to inhabit each other’s lives, but with the Black Death ravaging Old Florence, can May’s longing for Marco’s touch be anything but madness?
And when later she follows the menacing Cristofana through a portale to fourteenth-century Florence, May never expects to find safety in the eyes of Marco, a soulful painter who awakens in her a burning desire and makes her feel truly seen. But when May wakes one night sensing someone in her room, only to find her ghostly twin staring back at her, normalcy becomes a distant memory. A chance to forget that back in Vermont, May’s parents, and all semblance of safety, were breaking up. It was meant to be a diversion-a summer in Florence with her best friend, Liam, and his travel-writer mom, doing historical research between breaks for gelato. In a sensual paranormal romance, a teen girl’s doppelgänger from 1348 Florence lures her into the past in hopes of exacting a deadly trade.
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