This YA historical novel is about the girl who became the model for Leonardo Da Vinci's famous picture "Mona Lisa," and the customs, mores and politics of Florence in the time of the de Medicis and the monk-reformer Savonarola. In this novel, Mona Lisa is the daughter of a silk merchant. Although she is in love with one of the younger sons of the Medici family, her father marries her to a rich widower who commissions the portrait. Her middle-class life is contrasted that of with her best friend, daughter of one of her father's silk workers. Putting the story in the words of the young Mona Lisa makes the complicated political aspects less clear, in my opinion, but otherwise this is a well-written book.

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