Sarah O'Connor

I received this book from Simon and Schuster Canada in exchange for an honest review.

“While the nymph is growing into its new skin–the very thing that will protect it and hold its shape–it is at its most vulnerable. The act of becoming demands such softness,” (Montrone).

Ten-year-old Leo spends her summers at her Nonna Tina’s hotel in Italy, taking the leftover items from guests and listening to stories that her father shares about Odysseys long journey home after the Trojan war. After an accident occurs with her father, Leo’s perception of the world is changed, and eight-years-later on the cusp of adulthood, Leo resumes her summers in Italy where she meets an American girl named Delores who forces Leo to rethink who she thinks she is.

I can’t exactly remember why I requested to read Nymph when requesting ARCs. Maybe it was the title, maybe it was the mention of Odysseus and Greek mythology. Either way it found it’s way to my NetGalley shelf, and I have some mixed feelings about it.

On the one hand, there are parts of this book that are really beautifully written. Montrone absolutely nailed the hot, sultry, Italian summer vibe in an old rundown hotel. It was very easy to visualize where Leo was working, her family, and the town she spent her summers in which makes Nymph a fantastic summer read. It is also surprisingly emotional in parts, and while delving too long (thought I wish it did) in it, I liked the brief moments of Leo’s grief and mourning that Montrone showed. I was also a bit confused by certain ways things were described, and perhaps this is something to Italian culture that I just don’t understand. Leo is American and lived in America nine out of twelve months of the year but is considered Italian by her Nonna’s community, possibly because she spends her summers at the hotel, possibly because her mother is Italian, but Delores is considered an American. So that was confusing to me, but I’m more willing to think that’s just a me thing.

The biggest issue with this book is that nothing happens. While reading the first part of the book I had no idea what the point of Leo being in Italy or listening to her father go on about Odysseus was even though the setting was beautifully described. Near the end of the first part and beginning of the second it became clearer and I appreciated more of what Montrone was doing when I understood why these things were mentioned. But just as quickly as nothing happens again. While the writing is beautiful at times it is incredibly purple and unrealistic at others, what some might consider a poetic description can just as easily be head scratching. For example, when recalling one of her first loves, Delores is described as speaking “affectionately, as though of an old haircut.” I know that this is a trend in literary fiction and I’m not saying it’s bad, but where is the line between poetic and purple? While I don’t think a story necessarily needs action to keep it going, it needs something stronger than it’s setting.

I thought the family dynamics were interesting but would have loved more with Leo and Max, her mother, and Nonna. They felt so peripheral compared to Leo’s father and Delores. I would have like snippets of what Leo’s life is like back in America, if she has any friends because she seemed to have no life outside of Italy where she spends two months of the year.

Nymph is a gorgeous story with a setting any mood reader will love to curl up with this summer. I just wanted a little more depth than I got.

Publication: June 9 2026
Publisher: Avid Reader Press/Simon and Schuster Canada
Pages: 256 pages (NetGalley)
Source: Simon and Schuster Canada
Genre: Fiction, Contemporary, Queer, Literary
My Rating: ⛤⛤⛤
Summary:

To ten-year-old Leo, life is a collection. She spends her mornings tidying the rooms of her Nonna Tina’s timeworn Italian agriturismo, carefully accumulating the curious bits of left-behind detritus from guests—a pearl earring, a lock of hair. Her nights are suffused with gathering the stories that flow from her father’s lips—liquor-spun tales of Odysseus and the Trojans in secret battle. But when an accident rips the gentle membrane of Leo’s childhood, she is left vulnerable to the pains and pleasures of growing up.

Years later, in a sultry summer not unlike the many that came before, the agriturismo is the only thing that remains the same. Nonna Tina has grown older, Leo’s brother Max is intractable and mercurial, and the curiosity Leo so loved to feed as a child has turned into something more confusing. When she meets Dolores, an American girl made brilliant by Leo’s perception of her, she can’t help but gather all the experiences first love promises, while shedding parts of the past she no longer fits into.