Readers Guide for The Unraveling of Julia

Less than a year ago, Julia Pritzker’s husband Mike was killed in a mugging in Philadelphia.

Julia receives a strange email that she’s inherited an Italian villa from a woman named Emilia Rossi. While Julia is adopted, she has not heard of Emilia and can’t figure out their connection.

But Julia heads to Tuscany to see the crumbling villa and hear about Emilia, who was reclusive and thought she was descended from Duchess Caterina Sforza. 

Emilia’s lawyer, Massimiliano Lombardi, who never met Emilia in person, urges her to sell the villa and refers her to a real estate agent, Franco Patelli.

Upon staying at the villa, Julia has strange and disturbing dreams and feels like someone is following her.

At the Ufizzi Gallery, Julia meets a librarian, Gianluca, who is fascinated by her research project. He takes her to Caterina Sforza’s castle.

Julia and Gianluca go to the local police to report that a white Fiat keeps following her. Marshal Torti, the police officer, says there is nothing they can do.

Julia sees a ghost who slips through a wall. So Julia opens up the wall and finds a tunnel that leads to a hidden child’s bedroom.

Marshal Torti comes to investigate the room and see if there was a crime committed.  Julia wonders if the child kept prisoner there could be a relative. Piero digs in the vineyard looking for bodies. 

Gianluca wonders if Emilia was involved in something criminal.

He also tells Julia that he’s fallen in love with her.

Villa caretakers Anna Mattia and Piero are creeped out by the police activity and have fled the villa, leaving Julia a gun. Franco teaches her how to shoot it. Also, Bianco the dog might have been poisoned with a hallucinogenic drug. Has someone been poisoning Julia too?

Julia learns that Gianluca was badly injured in a motorcycle accident.

Julia meets his family at the hospital and decides to ask for a drug test while she is there. She tests positive for the hallucinogen.

Courtney shows up by surprise and two of them find an abandoned well on the property and when they pull up the bucket, they find a lockbox. Inside is money and two Italian passports for Elena Ritorno, with Emilia’s picture,  and Patrizia Ritorno, a baby. There are also photos with evidence of injuries and abuse and the two women wonder if Emilia and her child were trying to escape an abuser. 

Julia goes to see a medium, who tells her that she has psychic abilities and can communicate with the dead directly.

After that, Julia goes to the hospital to visit Gianluca. She has a vision of him being chased by a police car and a white van. She tells Rafaella, Gianluca’s sister, to guard him.

Based on another vision Julia had of her mother as a teacher, she and Courtney are visiting nearby schools looking for her. 

Courtney finds hidden cameras in the villa. Also their car has a tracker and a microphone.

They find a school has a teacher who looks like Julia.

They send her to Florence to meet the woman, Fiamma, who has an art show.

Julia researched Adamo Bucci, who was mentioned by someone at the school. He looks familiar to Julia, who remembers she saw him having lunch with Franco the realtor. She wonders if Bucci is one of the prospective buyers of her villa.

They decided that Bucci and Franco might have hurt Gianluca as he was urging her not to sell. And that they preemptively killed Mike so he wouldn’t inherit the villa after she died. What???

At the art show, Fiamma introduces her paintings of an orphanage, and says that her mother admired Duchess Caterina. 

Fiamma confronts Julia, seeming upset. But two men, one the driver of the Fiat and one in a hoodie, are coming, so Julia runs, sending Courtney a pin from her phone.

Julia creates a blue aura around herself and pushes the man away.

Julia tells her whole story to the police in Florence. They are willing to investigate until she gets to the part about the blue aura and the spirit of Duchess Caterina helping her.

Fiamma shows up at the villa and is horrified at its condition. And Fiamma was the one kept in the cell bedroom, where her mother hid her a few days a month.

Fiamma tells Julia that she clashed with her mother as a teen, and then got pregnant. She and her boyfriend Roberta Colapino, decided to put the baby up for adoption. Julia asks Fiamma why her mother didn’t leave the villa and money to her and Fiamma says she doesn’t want it.

Fiamma can’t understand why her mother hid her and never let her go to school, so Julia explains that she thinks Emilia was an abused woman.

What was the ending of The Unraveling of Julia?

The guy with the hoodie goes on trial in Philadelphia for Mike’s murder. 

Anna Mattia and Franco admitted that Franco paid them to drug Julia. Franco was working with a man at Adamo Bucci’s company, who wanted to buy the villa and then flip it in a sale to Bucci. The men in the Fiat (Bernardo Vitali and Ciro Nardini) were hired by Marshal Torti.

Yes, all of the drama was over real estate!

Julia and Gianluca move into the villa and have a baby daughter.

If you have questions or think I forgot something or got something wrong, leave a comment!