There is something hypnotic about this dystopian novel. Petrucci builds a story inside a house that feels alive, a Palladian square hiding a perfect circle at its center. That image stayed with me the entire time I was reading.

The novel moves between two women separated by decades. Lidia, trapped in a love that burns, dies in that circular room at the bottom of the house. Irene, a real estate agent returning to Milan, is asked to sell the mansion in a city drowning in an orange haze and the effects of climate change. The house becomes the hinge, a space that holds everything unresolved, everything unspoken. Petrucci includes the house like a character.

Irene’s chapters felt especially sharp. Her father’s judgment, the pressure of returning to her hometown, while Milan itself feels on the verge of collapse. Her sections are claustrophobic. Meanwhile, Lidia’s story grows in haunting fragments, each new detail revealing the manipulation that shaped her last days.

What I loved most was that the book is that the story works like a slow echo between the two women. Every time Irene steps deeper into that house, she steps closer to Lidia’s unfinished life. Every page adds one more layer.

This one is quietly unsettling and beautifully constructed. Perfect for anyone who likes their literary fiction with a ghostly undertone.

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Lots of shapes in this; circles (titularly), triangles, squares? Maybe.

Anyway I loved it, this had everything I could have wanted: mystery, real estate, lesbians? Maybe.

I really enjoyed the structure of this, moving forwards in the ‘present’ while backwards in the ‘past’ to unwind a story in both directions to come together to a shocking, satisfying but believable ending. I found all the character arcs engaging and well combined together to create a believable web of relationships that drive the story forward. The setting was also immaculate, dropping enough hints to the setting without feeling the need to explicitly tell us what’s happened and what it all means. I don’t know if there’s other stories coming from this world but I’m eager for it!!

Definitely a recommended read from me

✨🏛️ The Perfect Circle by Claudia Petrucci is a beautifully eerie story where two women in different timelines become connected through one strange and unforgettable house in Milan.

Irene returns home to sell an unsellable mansion, only to find the place pulsing with traces of Lidia, a young woman who died there decades earlier in the middle of a secret and destructive love affair.

As Irene navigates family tension, climate chaos and her own doubts, the past begins to surface in ways she cannot ignore.

I loved the structure of this book. The present moves forward while the past moves backward, each chapter revealing another secret until both timelines meet in a clever and satisfying ending.

The characters feel rich and real, their lives intersecting in a web of ambition, betrayal and desire. The setting is immaculate too, full of subtle clues that build an atmosphere of quiet dread without ever over explaining.

If you enjoy literary mysteries with a touch of the uncanny, layered storytelling and stories where houses keep their memories close, this one is a brilliant pick.

Read more at The Secret Book Review.

This is a beautifully written book that takes on multiple themes.

This book is about longing. Longing for a feeling you expect to have after doing everything right, and realizing it never arrives. Longing for a connection that is supposed to be there, but fades away. Longing for a future that never came.

This book is about, to borrow a term from Henrike Kohpeiß, the bourgeois coldness of a woman who has the privilege to ignore the environmental crisis around her, an emotional detachment, an indifference to the perpetual fog hovering over Milan, protected by the social and material privilege that allow her to remain untouched by the crisis she is living in.

But, more than anything, I think this book is about memories. The persistence of it. How intricately it is tied to objects and imbues meaning to it, to otherwise cold concrete or stagnant water or dusty paintings. And yet how it persists even after an object is destroyed, long after people have come and gone.

I absolutely recommend this book. Thoughtful, elegantly written, and reflective.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher, World Editions, for providing an ARC of this book.

There are so many layers to The Perfect Circle. Dystopian, disturbing, intriguing, I enjoyed the storyline. I admit, I did not see where it was going. Very well.done.