Entertaining but
I was overall disappointed by how Lauro was presented. I think he really loved Tea but unfortunately he was in a terrible position (of his own making) and did the best he could although it took him too long to get there. Case in point, he lied about Tea being dead but told Ranieri the truth. If he was spiteful/ruthless he would have kept his mouth shut. He knew fully well where she was and that they were together. There is no way he wouldn’t have checked on Ranieri at least. He also at least financially and emotionally made sure that Beppe was taken care of. I truly believe that he didn’t try to see him before because he knew his son was insane. His biggest mistake was to not have killed Cesare himself after the first sibling died. Because of that, to me it was silly not to accept his legacy, if only because with that money he could have helped a lot of people and made sure both his mother, Ranieri and their family could have gone back to Venice no questions asked. Also, given the business they are in, having allies in Venice could be useful. His reaction was more impulsive than rational. I didn’t like how suddenly Ranieri and his mother were turned into heroes as if they didn’t make mistakes too. His mother, although young had an affair with a married man and let’s face it didn’t look/find him in 34 years. His name hasn’t changed. If not for Lauro they wouldn’t have connected. As for Ranieri, he fell in love with Tea but he knew how crazy his sister was, so he was careless in basically leaving her without making sure they could disappear first without a trace like they did in Switzerland. Ranieri also was never honest with Lauro about his feelings for Tea and how he basically wanted to adopt his son. So there’s enough blame to go around in my opinion. The rest of the story was ok, not that funny at times, and the author should have given us a better physical description of both Beppe and Amelia. This is supposed to be a standalone and at times it was difficult to follow if you hadn’t read the whole series.