The Amalfi Curse

I have had The Amalfi Curse in my TBR list since the day it was published in April 2025. The story is fantastic so I shouldn't have waited to read it. The story is told in a dual format between 1821 and the modern day.

The publisher's summary:  

Powerful witchcraft. A hunt for sunken treasure. Forbidden love on the high seas. Beware the Amalfi Curse…

Haven Ambrose, a trailblazing nautical archaeologist, has come to the sun-soaked village of Positano to investigate the mysterious shipwrecks along the Amalfi Coast. But Haven is hoping to find more than old artifacts beneath the azure waters; she is secretly on a quest to locate a trove of priceless gemstones her late father spotted on his final dive. Upon Haven’s arrival, strange maelstroms and misfortunes start plaguing the town. Is it nature or something more sinister at work?

As Haven searches for her father’s sunken treasure, she begins to unearth a centuries-old tale of ancient sorcery and one woman’s quest to save her lover and her village by using the legendary art of stregheria, a magical ability to harness the ocean. Could this magic be behind Positano’s latest calamities? Haven must unravel the Amalfi Curse before the region is destroyed forever…

Against the dazzling backdrop of the Amalfi Coast, this bewitching novel shimmers with mystery, romance and the untamed magic of the sea.

OMG! This was such an engaging novel. I was hooked from the first chapter. Both Mari and Haven’s lives were fascinating. They both were at the top of their game. Mari was the top sea witch, that all of the other streghe looked up to. She was also a good mentor to the young girls with the necessary lineage to be a streghe del mare, sea witch. The girls were not allowed to join the group of ladies until they reached the age of seventeen. Even the men in her village respected her. The men knew that their village was never pillaged by pirates because of Mari's incantations. She was responsible for keeping everyone in Positano safe and she did this job well. Mari has a secret though. She is planning to run away with a man named Holmes who she had fallen in live with. Their romance was prominent to the story but there were not any sexy scenes.

Haven is a nautical archaeologist with a plan to search for treasure that her father had found somewhere in the Li Galli area. Li Galli is an archepelago of three tiny islands. Unfortunately, he died of a stroke and never got the chance to return to the area and get the jewels that he found. His last words to Haven encouraged her to find that treasure. Haven was a daddy's girl and took all this to heart. A few months after his death Haven obtains funding to do research in the Li Galli area. She is going to search for the jewels but hasn't told anyone. 

I thought the writing was magnificent. Each chapter ended with suspense, which kept me up all night reading until I finished the book. The chapters alternated between Mari's story and Haven’s story. Both stories are captivating and I hated to have to switch back and forth between their perspectives.

The Amalfi Coast setting was enchanting, although my back hurt every time a character walked up and down the many steps from the sea to the main roads. The beauty of the area was evident throughout the story but especially when Mari and Haven looked out to the sea from a terrace high up in the village. The coast has many caves that were entered by the streghe when they performed their incantations. The incantations were not stated but the physical actions that the streghe used were described. In fact, I didn't know what the incantations were supposed to do until after I finished the book and noticed a description of them at the beginning of the book.

I loved this historical fiction novel and highly recommend it. I am rating it 5 out of 5 stars.