If you’ve already listened to our podcast episode covering The Next 365 Days, you know that our overall impression of the movie was that it was boring as hell. There just wasn’t enough THERE there, and there were way too many pointless shopping/eating/dancing montages where there could have been plot or character development. However, now having read the book from which the movie was adapted, I can tell you EXACTLY why that is. Every bit of the conflict holding Book 3 of this series together was taken out and while I now understand perfectly why it was done, it was a bad call. Well, if we’re being totally honest, making these incredibly problematic books into movies was a bad call to begin with, but here we are.
One more thing before I get to the book analysis. I can’t believe I have to do this in my very first blog post but here is your trigger warning -- I will be discussing rape, sexual assault and domestic violence. I will flag the specific paragraphs with asterisks if you want to skip them but still read the rest. I won’t be going into a ton of detail because the scenes were graphic and frankly, I’m still upset about them, but they are crucial to understanding how things unfold so I have to talk about them.
The book picks up the story roughly where the movie does, but we do get to see more of the direct aftermath of Laura’s shooting in the novel. I appreciated that because the movie makes it seem like the extent of Laura’s injuries is two small scars on her stomach, from which she has already made a miraculous and complete recovery. In the book, we actually get to see her in the hospital for a bit before Massimo brings her home to continue her recovery there. Something the book does a lot better is communicate passage of time. The movie makes no attempt to do that, so it’s unclear how long after the shooting it has been when Laura is moving about freely and seemingly unhindered. In the book, we are shown that it is taking several weeks for Laura to walk without pain. Also Massimo RANDOMLY reveals that Laura actually had to get a heart transplant when she got shot, which is wild because I believe she was shot in the stomach. I suppose we’re meant to assume that the stress on her body triggered her very vague and mysterious heart condition to the point where they needed to throw the whole heart out. We learn later on in the book that Nacho was the one who procured the heart for her, which is a strange detail since we never get anything further on how he did that or from whom the heart was procured. None of that was mentioned in the movie and I guess I can see why since it didn’t even really matter in the source material.
One of the major complaints we had about the movie version was that the rift in Massimo and Laura’s marriage seems to come out of nowhere and both of them just refuse to communicate with each other and that only makes things worse. We can’t blame the movie for this because that’s exactly how it happens in the book, too. We are given the impression that the general issues are the loss of the baby, Massimo’s suspicion that something happened between Laura and Nacho while she was being held hostage, and Laura’s resentment that Massimo’s mafia affiliation almost got her killed. None of these are insignificant problems and even for a respectful, healthy partnership, they would be difficult to overcome. To Laura’s credit (in the book, at least), she starts seeing a therapist to help her process the trauma of losing her baby and deal with her troubled marriage. She also secretly goes on birth control because she doesn’t want to have another child with Massimo, at least not right away. So, Laura basically gets herself together and starts going to work at her fashion company, which she is just as unqualified to run and manage in the books as she is in the movies. At least in the books, she admits that the whole thing is only possible because she is fucking rich and can afford to hire the best designers and rent the classiest office space and oh my god, the entitlement and attitude. I guess we can respect the honesty, though. So for once, Laura is making smart life decisions but Massimo is very much not. As it is sort of alluded to in the movie, he starts retreating from Laura and doing TONS of cocaine.
Now, if you read the previous book in the series, you know that Massimo loves cocaine. This little hobby of his never made it to the movies for obvious reasons. He is shown doing a line in this movie but the implication is that he only does it because he has been driven to it by his grief and despair. This is not an accurate depiction of Book Massimo. Book Massimo LOVES cocaine, and he doesn’t need to be going through a tough time to indulge that addiction. It becomes a whole thing in the second book because when Laura becomes pregnant, she tells Massimo that he has to stop doing cocaine because if Massimo does cocaine and blows his load inside her, the baby could get high or develop an addiction because of the cocaine content in his semen. By the way, there are no scientific or medical case studies in which this has actually occurred and the educated consensus is that tainted semen would not harm a fetus but it is very hilarious to me that they discuss it as a serious possibility. So anyway, Massimo immediately goes back to doing tons of cocaine, which is not great and signals the beginning of a MAJOR shift in his character.
So, just like in the movie, Laura and Olga jet set off to Portugal for a fashion week. Things have been bad with Massimo for six months. While they’re in Portugal, Laura spots Nacho at a surfing competition, and he ends up stalking her back to the apartment she rented and I think we’re meant to feel that it was sweet and romantic, but it’s actually pretty fucking creepy. Regardless, they end up hanging out one night and even though they don’t have sex, they both have an orgasm from like…rubbing up on each other which was weirdly hot given how high school it was. Nacho drops her back off at her apartment where Massimo is there waiting for her.
Here is where I am going to begin discussing some of the triggering content I mentioned earlier. Please skip the next paragraph if you think it might make you uncomfortable.
*Similar to the scene in the movie, Massimo confronts her and demands to know where she’s been. But then they start fighting, and it culminates with Massimo raping and assaulting her to remind her who she belongs to, and it is incredibly difficult to read. It is absolutely wild to me that we are supposed to continue to root for Massimo and Laura to be together after this, and it is stupid obvious why they cut this scene from the movie. The book attempts to explain away his behavior by telling us that Massimo was coked up out of his mind and literally had no idea what he was doing, but that is equally problematic so, honestly, the book ends here for me. I kept reading because I promised you all I would, but it’s definitely not fun anymore. Laura does seem to at least vaguely comprehend that these acts of violence are unacceptable because she confronts Massimo the next day and correctly describes the incident as rape. There’s a very disturbing moment where he tries to say that her resistance and fighting is part of the fun and that she always wants it on some level. Fortunately Laura shuts this down by telling him she never consented the previous night and had been begging him to stop the entire time. She announces that she’s going home to Poland for a while to think about things, which is wild because like…what is there to think about? THROW THE WHOLE MAN OUT. Even more unsettling is how she allows Massimo to kiss her goodbye and it seems like she’s already halfway to forgiving him for literally raping her. I can’t with this book. Blanka Lipinska is a deeply unwell woman.*
So, Laura goes to Poland. She gets, like, two days of privacy and space before Nacho shows up uninvited to remind her that he’s the better choice. You know, as long as she conveniently forgets that he is CONSTANTLY stalking her and having her followed and is also a high-ranking member of a mafia organization just like Massimo. They do a bit more dry humping but Nacho says he won’t fuck her until he’s the only man in her heart. So romantic.
Upon her return to Sicily, Laura and Massimo attempt to reconcile, and he seems to be doing well. He is (allegedly) sober and has been seeing a therapist. He also buys Laura a tiny dog which she names Prada because of course she does. But the good vibes don’t last. Laura accidentally calls him Nacho while they’re fooling around, and he loses his goddamn mind. He immediately falls off the wagon and starts threatening to assault Laura again, but she escapes before he can get his hands on her and runs right into Nacho’s waiting arms.
Spooked by Massimo’s erratic behavior, Laura has a BRILLIANT idea and decides that she needs to get Nacho SUPER drunk and then deliberately make him angry in order to find out if she can trust him not to physically assault her when he’s intoxicated which is…I mean…I don’t even have to address that, right? We can all agree it’s insanely stupid. It works out for her, though, and she gets rewarded with actual vaginal penetration once Nacho has sobered up a bit. And just like a Pringles can, once you pop, the fun don’t stop. They bang constantly for what seems like years but I think it’s just a week or two.
Laura finally decides she wants to divorce Massimo which, predictably, pisses him off quite a bit. However, UNPREDICTABLY, he pulls a classic Godfather/Se7en move and mails her a box with her tiny dog’s massacred body in it. Like…what the fuck, guys? Again, fully understand why the movies went in a different direction, but this isn’t even remotely like the Massimo we know and lust after on the big screen. Despite all of this unhinged psychopathy, Laura decides it’s still okay for her to attend Olga and Domenico’s wedding, where Massimo is supposed to be the best man. The excellent critical thinking skills don’t end there. While she’s at the wedding, she allows him to convince her that Nacho was the one who murdered her dog in order to drive her further away from Massimo. She actually takes the bait and tells Nacho’s security team to fuck off and lets Massimo take her home. But SURPRISE, Massimo is a fucking liar and he was just trying to get her to ditch Nacho’s security so he could kidnap her AGAIN.
Here’s your second and final trigger warning. Skip the next paragraph if you’re sick of Massimo’s bullshit.
*Massimo chains her to his bed and repeatedly drugs and rapes her over the course of SEVERAL DAYS with the sole intention of getting her pregnant again. It is brutal and disgusting and honestly terrifying. Remember when we were all Team Massimo? YIKES. Massimo also reveals that, through hypnosis (obviously), he discovered that Laura wasn’t his savior after all. He originally believed that he had a vision of her when he almost died because she was his guardian angel, but it turns out, he had just seen her at some point before he got shot and it was all a coincidence. This is a weird reveal that doesn’t seem fully necessary, but fine. He uses it to justify why he suddenly does not give a shit about Laura’s well-being anymore but that is an incredibly weak excuse for the violence he exhibits towards her in this book.*
Ultimately, Nacho manages to get in there and bust Laura out. Laura has the opportunity to shoot Massimo in the face and just…doesn’t for some idiotic reason. She and Nacho escape to Tenerife and continue to fall in love and have sex constantly, which is kind of insane to me. I really don’t think I’d feel like having a sex marathon after what I’d just been through, but that’s just me, I guess. Laura finds out that she is pregnant again, presumably with Massimo’s child, and intends to have an abortion. However, when she goes for the appointment, the doctor reveals that the baby is seven weeks along, which means it has to be Nacho’s and not Massimo’s. This changes everything and she decides to keep the baby. The epilogue jumps five years into the future and we see Laura and Nacho’s daughter Stella playing with Olga and Domenico’s son Luca (could we possibly be setting the stage for a spin-off about the ill-fated love story between the heirs of two rival gangs? I sure hope not.) Olga casually mentions that Massimo is still deeply involved in her and Domenico’s lives and that he is specifically raising Luca to take over the mafia organization and like…no one is intervening with this process whatsoever? Okay then.
That’s basically the end of the book (series??) and I am honestly quite shocked. Did not expect the turn this book took, which is funny because it’s not like Massimo ever really presented himself to be a kind, well-adjusted man capable of change with good intentions. Book Massimo was always rougher around the edges than Movie Massimo. He is much more aggressive and deceitful and controlling, which is crazy if you think about how Movie Massimo is also those things to some degree. But with Laura as our spiritual guide through this hot mess, we just sort of learned to accept and embrace Massimo as her true love and someone she should be with. Even if he acted like a nightmare most of the time, he always did seem to draw a line at perpetrating violence against Laura, and we were led to believe that he did love her in some fucked up, toxic way. His sudden and dramatic decline to the REALLY dark side feels like a betrayal of the reader because we invested two full books in learning to accept their flawed but genuine relationship only to be told in the first 100 pages of Book 3 that it was actually a mistake all along.
And what makes it even harder to swallow is the fact that Laura does not even leave Massimo for a better situation. Sure, the book and the movie try to paint Nacho as a gentler and more considerate partner, but there are so many similarities between Book Massimo and Book Nacho that it feels as if Laura has not learned a goddamn thing. Nacho is overprotective and possessive. He is a terrible communicator. He is the leader of a rival mafia association AND an assassin. Literally toward the end of the book, he and Laura go to Egypt for three days so he can KILL SOMEONE on an assignment. He tells Laura she has her freedom and can do whatever she wants, but he has his own security details to follow her around; his cars have GPS trackers in them; and he knows a startling amount of personal information about Laura and lords that information over her as if to say, “Hey, I know this, and I can know anything else I want to know, too.” He is UNIMAGINABLY rude to his sister Amelia. He claims he is just looking out for her and protecting her, but he basically bans her from being able to date anyone and gets fully angry when she talks about being attracted to men. It’s fucking creepy and a massive red flag to me that he treats his own adult sister like a pathetic stupid woman who can’t be trusted to make her own decisions. It’s vile. But this is the man Laura ends up with and we’re supposed to be happy for her? It also doesn’t tie up enough loose ends. I am deeply uncomfortable with the fact that Massimo is still involved with Olga’s family and therefore Laura’s life. It feels like something that needs to be addressed more directly because he does not seem like the type of person to just fade into the background and stop doing damage.
Now, this whole experience has me questioning what the FUCK they are doing with this movie series. Obviously, none of this happened in the movie. Again, I understand why they did it but at the same time, it leaves the story totally plot-less and character motivations are a complete mystery. Massimo and Laura’s marital problems are a lot more abstract and less offensive, and so she experiments with Nacho simply because she is unhappy in her marriage. Movie Massimo has not physically assaulted her and actually seems to still be in love with Laura and is just having some difficulty working through his grief and his guilt. But if that is the case, Laura’s decision, the cliffhanger upon which the movie ends, is a lot less certain. She ends up with Nacho in the book, but she had a lot more provocation to divorce Massimo in that scenario. And regardless of her choice in the movie, is there even enough left to make a fourth movie out of the aftermath?
I felt from the very beginning that Massimo and Laura were destined to be endgame. It’s the classic outcome of any erotic novel trilogy or even simple romance novels. Book 1 is where the man and woman fall in love. Book 2 is where the man and woman start having problems that lead the woman to look outside the relationship for something more stable. Book 3 is where the woman realizes no one will ever love her like the man does, despite whatever toxic problems they have. The Next 365 Days turns that premise on its head and leaves us to wonder…which Massimo are we going to see in a potential fourth movie? Will we get more of the gangster with a heart of gold that we’ve seen in the movies or will he take the dark U-turn toward violent Book Massimo?
Personally, I hope they don’t go there. The first two movies were so fun and sexy, and I don’t think anyone is prepared for or wants the dark conclusion Blanka Lipinska gave us. But if anyone out there feels differently and would like to share their thoughts and/or reactions, definitely reach out and let me know! And as far as recommendations go, this book is absolutely better left unread.
Thanks for reading! See you next time!
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