Built & reviewed by David Richards Build #28
⭐ Overall Score: 100/100
Venice Night Starlit is a 281-piece Venetian book nook kit featuring an illuminated canal, infinity-mirror effect and three LED strips — and it is the first kit I’ve awarded a perfect 100/100 score.
La leggenda di Venice Night Starlit
When the last light leaves the lagoon, Venice begins to whisper.
Across the canal, beneath the shadow of the Ponte dell’Accademia, two little cafés face one another in the blue darkness. One glows softly beneath the evening sky; the other waits patiently for dawn.
They say their owners were once lovers.
Separated by the water, they never found the courage — or perhaps the opportunity — to cross the canal. Instead, they learned another language.
Every evening, as the sun disappears behind the rooftops, a violinist takes his place outside the first café.
Una nota per te.
One note for you.
The melody drifts across the water, carried beneath the arches and between the gondolas. The canal catches the music, breaks it into ripples of light, and carries the message to the other side.
There, a single lantern answers.
Then another.
Warm light becomes blue. Blue becomes gold. A secret conversation begins to shimmer across the water.
Ti vedo.
I see you.
Ti aspetto.
I am waiting for you.
And so the two lovers speak without ever meeting.
But Venice has always had a little magic of its own.
When a gondola glides between the cafés, the lantern at its bow catches the surface of the canal and, for just a moment, the years seem to fold into one another.
On one side, the warm red brick of 1953.
On the other, vines climbing towards the blue light of 2026.
Past and present reflected together in the same water.
Perhaps that is the secret of Venice.
Nothing truly disappears here.
A face in a window.
A song carried across the canal.
A gondola slipping silently into the night.
A love letter written in light.
And somewhere beneath the stars, two lanterns are still answering one another.
Perché a Venezia, anche il silenzio ha una storia da raccontare.
Because in Venice, even silence has a story to tell.
(This little interaction comes directly from the instructions supplied with Venice Night Starlit. I recreated it here because it perfectly captures the playful character of this kit.)
This is the first time I have ranked a kit with the perfect score, although Sunset Isle from Rolife nearly matched. Venice Night Starlit is jointly branded as Funpola/Timory. The model number SQ-83 shows the manufacturer as Joincon which you can now find out easily from our reference guide. This is the first kit I have done under these brand names and I was genuinely impressed.
What do you get
This came in a lovely box with clear information about the product. The noticeable difference from every kit I have built so far is that it had an acrylic sheet with ripple effect for the canal and a beautiful gondola carefully protected in layers of bubble wrap. The quality of the printing on the MDF was perfect and there were a number of well labelled plastic bags to make your life as easy as possible.
Venice Night Starlit: The Instructions
The manual is entirely in clear, easy-to-follow English, which makes it exceptionally easy to follow. It is a high quality A4 colour manual and not once during the build did I have to turn the manual upside down, squint my eyes or zoom in with my iPhone.
Venice Night Starlit: The Build
Basically you are building the 4 walls of the kit independently with different levels of the building being built in stages. The laser cutting is perfect. A relatively easy press for them to pop out but no pieces falling out of the template – which means no missing pieces.
The supplied greenery is very good as there are 9 plants which are already assembled and have adhesive applied plus some foliage and flowers for you to customise. This also shows the first of the LED strips which have a backing and are therefore very easy to apply.
After the first side is partially built it is attached to the base and the acrylic sheet is added. Throughout the build the pieces slot in very well and minimal glue is required throughout.
Opposite wall is now added along with the bridge over the Venetian canal. A lovely crystal ball is added onto one of the pillars of the bridge.
Venice Night Starlit: Lighting
Lighting is the one area that frightens many people with book nooks, including my wife, but if the instructions are good, then there is no need to panic (Do you remember Corporal Jones in Dad’s Army..”Don’t panic, don’t panic”
The kits contains 3 LED strips, 2 flat LED lights and a street lantern. There is also a touch sensor. None of this is particularly challenging apart from attaching the LED strips behind the infinity mirror as if you have sausage fingers like myself and King Charles it is a bit of an effort.
This is also the first kit that I have purchased which uses micro-magnets for the battery compartment and Wowser it makes a difference. A lot easier to pull out the power block during the build to retest the lighting to make sure you have not mucked something up.
Venice Night Starlit: Final Verdict
Well, what can I say. This is the perfect kit and is so stunning that even my Social Media Manager (my daughter), who shares our builds on Instagram said AMAZING – and she has seen every one of our builds so will be very immune to book nooks.
With 281 pieces it is a relaxing build and I would say build time is ~ 10 hours. Who should do it? As the instructions and quality of the kit is so good a newbie could most probably manage it but with the lighting modules I would most probably say a Beginner+ (a few standard ones done)
There are also no books to wrap, scrolls to roll or boxes to fold which means we are starting to see the real deviation away from the name of Book Nook as predicted in our recent article.
Pros
- Exceptional piece fit
- Excellent instructions
- Superb printed MDF
- Beautiful lighting
- Infinity-mirror canal
- Minimal glue required
- Great for beginners moving into more advanced kits
- Micro-magnet battery compartment
- Stunning finished display
Cons
- Infinity-mirror LED installation can be fiddly
- Some edge painting could improve the finish
- Around 10 hours to build
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