What an absolutely satisfying, wonderful book. I can never get enough of Sarah Dunant, and Sacred Hearts, her third novel set in Renaissance Italy makes me wish I could read it again for the first time.

Sacred Hearts takes the reader completely into a time when women’s lives were absolutely ruled by men – fathers and husbands on the one hand, and the prevailing rulers on the other. Young girls, particularly in the noble class, had no say in their futures. Their lives could either be lived in the home of their husband or in a convent.

Dunant’s two major characters, Serafina and Zuana, both come to convent life unwillingly. Serafina is placed in the convent as punishment because she loves someone other than the man her father picks as her husband, while Zuana entered it years earlier after the death of her father, a learned man who, in teaching his daughter all he knows, renders her too “smart” therefore unmarriageable. How the women deal with their new lives is also very different from each other.

Nevertheless, we soon come to realize that even within the walls of the convent, though governed by the Abbess, the nuns are still subject to the dictates of Rome and that men are still in control and make the decisions about what they can and cannot do, and how much access they are to be allowed to the outside world.

Against this powerful theme, Dunant places the equally powerful themes of love, duty and sisterhood. It is in the clash and balance of these that the novel finds its denouement.

The elegant, tightly crafted plot wound around excellent historical detail and the perfect capacity of the author to show, not tell, allows the reader to feel completely immersed in the life of these women, without feeling swamped by wordy descriptions. Additionally, we are able to feel something for each of the varying characters that Dunant draws for us – their emotions and motivations are strong and we can find in them our own.

I'm certain that Sacred Hearts will appeal to anyone with a love of good historical fiction, as well as to those readers who love well-written characters.