"Marthese Fenech plunges you into her slice of history so deftly that you do not just read it, you live it."

– Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch, award winning historical fiction author of Don’t Tell the Nazis and Stolen Girl

"Crystal-clear descriptive language … Ms. Fenech has recreated the compelling world of the Montesa family of Malta and the Knights of St John as though she time-travelled back to the sixteenth century to do her research. An impressive debut!"

 

– Karen Connelly, Governor General’s Literary award recipient and author of Burmese Lessons

"Over the decades I have read many novels with Malta as their setting. Eight Pointed Cross is the first one I have found to be accurate and factual in all of its cultural and historical details, while at the same time, having a thrilling and exciting plot depicted from both sides of the warring factions. Marthese Fenech is phenomenal!"

– Knight Commander Richard S. Cumbo, Order of St John, and Curator of the Maltese-Canadian Museum in Toronto

"Eight Pointed Cross has all the ingredients that I consider important in a novel: a gripping plot, engaging, believable characters, stunning description, violence, love, sex, remarkable psychological insight, historical detail. The internal struggles of characters such as Augustine and Franco lend depth and substance to the characterization. A more recent literary giant, William Faulkner, in his speech upon receiving the Nobel Prize for literature in 1950, opined that the only thing worth writing about is the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself. Ms. Fenech has passed both tests with flying colours."

– John Heighton, reviewer for the Porcupine's Quill

"Many historical sagas have been published, but few convey the scale, complexity, and attention to historical detail of Eight Pointed Cross. Marthese Fenech creates intricate plots and multi-dimensional characters, whom she moves from one perilous situation to another, keeping readers avidly turning the pages. I found myself thoroughly immersed, a result of the stylistic traps awaiting the reader around every treacherous corner and the unabashed pathos of the tragedy subsumed in the plot. Ms Fenech must have been born with the narrative genetics in perfect order. I truly hope her relentless talent is acknowledged where it should be. Managing to weave a gripping storyline from the ordinary misadventures of love, envy, hate, cowardice and violence underscores her skills better than had she opted for a big story against an epic background."

– Giovanni Bonello, historian, author, and former Judge of the European Courts of Human Rights

"With a lyrical narrative that is as rich in historical detail as it is in story and a prose that is poetically pleasing to the ear, Eight Pointed Cross is the tautly gripping account of the clash of two great empires. Eight Pointed Cross is astoundingly ambitious, but it is in all ways an absolute triumph. Fenech has penned not only a dazzling account of the Knights Hospitaller and what life was like in Malta during this time but also what it was like to grow up in Istanbul. And by writing this book in third person subjective, Fenech has assured that Eight Pointed Cross will definitely stand out in a crowded bookcase."

– Mary Anne Yarde, the Coffee Pot Book Club

"Fenech’s epic tapestry of a novel encompasses all the sights, sounds, and smells of the 16th-century Mediterranean: tender domestic scenes and blood-drenched battles, privilege and squalor. I believed every minute of it."

 

– Carol Rasmussen, science writer at NASA and former book review editor at Library Journal

"Marthese Fenech’s talent as a storyteller will not let you escape this enchanting tale, painfully detailed and a must to history lovers. You will fall in love with the characters and never forget them."

– Claire Agius Ordway, producer and host of Dak li Jghodd, Ilsien in-nisa, and Travel and Taste

"Eight Pointed Cross is everything a fan of historical fiction could hope for. …And you're left confused about who to cheer for because there are great people on both sides, and isn't that the BEST kind of story?"

– Fred Kennedy, Toronto radio personality on Q107 and host of the Issue Zero podcast