The Unraveling of Julia

The Unraveling of Julia (2025) is a novel by Lisa Scottoline. A psychologically intense gothic thriller with paranormal overtones, the story follows widow Julia Pritzker, who travels to Tuscany after inheriting a mysterious villa from a stranger. While there, she unravels a web of ancestral secrets, international conspiracy, and supernatural ambiguity that forces her to question fate, identity, and her own sanity. The novel explores Identity Destabilized by Grief, The Importance of Integrating Different Families, and Inheritance as a Portal to Hidden History.

The Unraveling of Julia was a New York Times and USA Today bestseller, as well as Scottoline’s 36th novel. She traveled around Italy to research the novel, and drew upon her experience as a trial lawyer for the trial scene in the book.

This guide uses the 2025 Grand Central Publishing hardcover edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of death, graphic violence, child abuse, mental illness, physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual content, and substance use.

Plot Summary

Julia’s husband, Mike, is murdered on the streets of Philadelphia a year before they planned to try and get pregnant. Her adoptive parents are both dead at this point, and she struggles to leave the house. Six months later, Julia inherits a villa from Emilia Rossi and its surrounding lands, including a vineyard. Her best friend Courtney convinces Julia to travel overseas to the villa and collect DNA to see if she’s related to Rossi.

After meeting with Rossi’s lawyer, Lombardi, in Milan, Julia goes to her villa in Croce. She discovers that the property is in very bad shape, and Rossi has burned all the belongings that might have contained her DNA. However, there are beautiful, intact frescos on the villa’s ceilings. One is an astrological map that echoes Julia’s obsession with astrology. A caretaker couple, Anna and Piero, remain on the property. Anna cooks delicious meals for Julia. A realtor named Franco tries to get Julia to sell the villa.

Julia begins having nightmares and visions that include Caterina Sforza. The bedroom fresco is the Sforza family tree; Rossi believed her family descended from Sforza. While researching Caterina in Florence, Julia is followed by a man in a black ballcap. While trying to lose him, she runs into a librarian named Gianluca. They begin to fall in love.

Julia’s visions eventually lead her to break down a wall of the villa and discover a door to an underground tunnel that leads to a child’s bedroom. There, she finds watercolor paintings, including a self-portrait, and a comb with hair that she can test for DNA. Julia believes Rossi was involved with a group that kidnapped and imprisoned children, so she goes to the police. Torti, a police officer, is unhelpful and tells Julia to sell the villa and go back to America. After seeing the tunnel, Anna and Piero leave, saying Julia is mentally ill like Rossi, and that the villa is haunted.

When Gianluca takes Julia sightseeing to Imola and Forli, they are followed by a man in a white Fiat. Gianluca is run off the road by co-conspirators targeting Julia and ends up in a medically induced coma. While at the hospital, Julia meets Gianluca’s family and gets tested for drugs. Julia learns that Anna was drugging her by adding a hallucinogen to Julia’s meals. Courtney comes to Italy to help Julia.

Julia and Courtney look for the well that was depicted in the watercolor paintings found in the underground cell. It is near the villa, and Rossi hid a go-bag inside with passports. The passports reveal that Rossi and her daughter had different names. There are also pictures of physical abuse. Julia realizes that Rossi used the cell to hide her daughter from their abuser.

Julia meets with a family investigator, Poppy, who recommends she meet with a medium, Helen. Helen tells Julia that she has psychic gifts of her own and offers to train her.

While visiting Gianluca, Julia uses techniques that Helen taught her and is able to communicate with Gianluca telepathically. She has a vision of his accident, which involved a police car running him off the road. She also has a vision of paintings hanging on the hospital wall. They are from a school group and include a self-portrait of a teacher that looks remarkably like Julia.

Julia and Courtney travel around to various schools in the small towns surrounding the hospital. Eventually, one administrator notices that Julia looks just like one of their teachers, Fiamma, and suggests Julia go to Fiamma’s art show in Florence to meet her. Julia does and Fiamma, her birth mother, recognizes her. While they are talking outside the gallery, Julia sees the man that killed Mike and the Fiat driver.

Fiamma calls the police and Julia runs to the Boboli Gardens. There, Julia channels Caterina, taking on a blue aura, and whips Mike’s murderer into a sculpture. He and his co-conspirators, including Franco and Anna, are arrested. The group wanted to build a hospitality complex on the villa’s land. They attacked Gianluca because he was in favor of Julia keeping the villa. When Julia wouldn’t sell, they tried to kill her.

The man who killed Mike also stands trial in Philadelphia, where he is convicted of murder. Gianluca wakes up from his coma and Julia helps with his recovery. They get married, and the novel ends with Julia giving birth to their baby.