The Last Girls of Pompeii

Title: The Last Girls of Pompeii


Author: Kathryn Lasky


Summary:  In Pompeii, Julia's two older sisters are getting married.  But while her parents are planning joy for her siblings, they are plotting something different for Julia, with her withered arm, and her slave Sura, who is very beautiful.  Sura will be sold as a concubine to a nasty fuller and Julia will be sent as a priestess to a cult.  Marcus, Julia's cousin, will help Julia run away.  But then Mount Vesuvius erupts and everything is changed.  Julia and Sura run away, but Marcus and all their friends and family are buried. 


Stars: 4


Violence: 3, because some squabbling sisters hit each other.  Julia pricks the fuller with a hairpin and draws blood.  Gladiators fight in an arena and one is hurt in the arm.  Perhaps Mount Vesuvius erupting may be thought of as violence. 


Romance: 5 for when the fuller and a porter try to kiss Sura.  The fuller is married.  In the baths, girls step on the private parts of Mercury in a fresco. 


Language: 0, though I know this isn't on a 1-10 scale.  There were no bad words at all. 


Appropriate for: Young adults. 


Other: I noticed quite a few errors.  Was this a first draft or something?  Lasky spelled sibyl both "sibyl" and "sybil".  One part, at the end of Cornelia's wedding, was missing a period and may also have been missing part of the writing.  I can't see how this got past an editor and to the publisher.