Lexi

Good classic historical romance novel! It's not strictly historically accurate (William is purported to have had one mistress, but she is not mentioned by name in this book. Mary mentions William doesn't wear wigs, but he certainly at least wore them in the portraits that exist. In real life Mary apparently had a miscarriage within a year of their marriage, but not only does the book not mention Mary having miscarriages at all, it's certainly not possible she could've had one within a year of getting married in this book), but it's a pretty excellent highlights version of history.

I found the beginning before Mary was introduced to be slow, although I did enjoy the reveal that an angry mob killed and partially ate two of the politicians which apparently possibly happened in real life! (there's no way to know FOR SURE if it really did happen or if it was just an exaggeration or metaphor). I don't know, the idea that a bunch of people got fed up of how their politicians were treating them so they killed and ate the politicians was kind of encouraging.

Besides that, the beginning part of the book was dull, but maybe I just don't like passages about battle tactics, signing documents, and disagreeing with France. The plot picked up when Mary finally arrived in the narrative. The warfare in the end of the book wasn't as boring to me as the beginning part.

This is a very clean book. There's mentions of people dying, but no gory descriptions. Sex occurs entirely offscreen. There's a lot of “He took her in his arms and she knew he was going to make love to her” types of descriptions that then cut to later. The most, ahem, titillating passage was a mention that a character was fondling a woman's breasts. That is the description, there's nothing saucier or more detailed than what I said.

As far as I know the internal descriptions of fashions and furniture are accurate for the time period. Don't be fooled by the cover featuring a woman who's clearly wearing mascara and purple eyeshadow. Other than William and apparently Mary not wearing wigs nothing stuck out to me as period inaccurate (and I don't know enough about them - like i said he's clearly bewigged in the portraits of him, but I don't know if in their regular non-portrait lives if they both sported their natural hair rather than wigs).

All in all, I enjoyed this book! It's not a book I plan to keep in my collection for the rest of my life, but it's one that I wouldn't mind if I had to read it again.

5/5 would read again

An okay follow-up to the first book. It's extremely repetitive and so easy to figure out what's happening almost immediately. Protagonist Jane spends like 85% of the book crying and literally vomiting, after several people encourage her to actually confront her husband she... doesn't. Until the very end. But nobody including her therapist seems to care that she's literally making no effort?

The not-really subplots with Calla go nowhere - she for some reason is in love with a frog and has a massive melt down when the frog escapes to mate with a frog, and a character suggests her overreaction is actually symptomatic of some bigger issue Calla is having. This is never addressed again. So why was Calla freaking out so much over a frog??? We never find out. I thought it was going to lead to a heart-to-heart between Jane and Calla where Calla reveals she feels abandoned by her father (who's busy with his gallery opening), but nope. Never comes up again.

There's a recurring piece of advice that's basically “just because Person A cheated on Person B doesn't mean Person A doesn't still love Person B, so Person B should forgive Person A” which is really weird that it came up so many times, with no nuance? There's no like “Oh yeah he forgave me for cheating on him, but I had to work for years to re-earn his trust.” It's just “Yeah I was forgiven for cheating and it's fine now, so you should forgive YOUR husband for cheating on you.” It was just weird and made me uncomfortable with how many characters were apparently totally fine with cheating/being cheated on?

Jane resolves to Finally Do Something what feels like 75 times, and it gets so annoying. Also annoying is how much of this book is just a recap of fairy tales. Gothel spends like two pages describing the plot of Rapunzel for some reason.

And...
Like I said, it's incredibly obvious pretty much immediately that Jane is already pregnant, and of course that Gallant is not actually cheating on her. So the extremely sustained misunderstanding throughout the first like 210 pages isn't fun to read. The explanation in-universe for why Jane didn't realize she was pregnant is fine, although it doesn't really make sense to me that as soon as she knows she's pregnant she now constantly feels the baby kicking when she didn't before. Her friends give her terrible advice. And it was weird, Winnie is so casual for so long about not caring at all that Jane thinks her marriage is in danger, then abruptly decides that she and Jane should stop hanging out for a while, and then as abruptly she and Jane are friends again and Winnie cares SO MUCH about Jane's worries about being cheated on. It seriously feels like the author wrote half of this book at once and came back to it after like two years without rereading anything.

I really enjoyed the first book, but the sequel is just... not it. I didn't hate it, but I don't think I'll ever reread it. I'd love to see like a “director's cut” of the sequel, though. The storyline is okay and the characters are good, it's like the book just needs something to be as great as the first one.

[Description from inside the dust jacket of the book, since there is no description on goodreads]

The Normans were the conquerors, the oppressors, the new lords of England. Tales of their tyranny, their greed for land, had traveled before them, even into the remote corners of the Welsh Marches, and men feared and hated them.

Nothing could have persuaded Elfreda, daughter of a Saxon thane, into marriage with one of the invaders, except the hope that the union would save her father's people from further bloodshed.

But the Saxons would not accept their Norman overlords and soon rebellion was flaring along the length of the March.

Oh boy was this a disappointment. I pretty much devoured Graceling, and liked Fire all right, so I was expecting to enjoy this book. Nope!

Among the problems in this book:
The romance subplot adds nothing - unlike in Graceling and Fire. Bitterblue doesn't seem to learn about herself or grow as a person, the romance subplot seems to just teach her that kissing is nice.
Nobody ever said anything with a personality - it felt like every other line, someone was saying something either blandly or dryly. That really grinds on your nerves after a while!
The sort of overall plot - people recovering from mind control while Bitterblue discovers there are parts of the castle she's never been in - didn't really make sense given the, what, 8 year in-universe gap between this book and Graceling. I get the mind control fog was thick, but, come on. 8 years and people are still recovering?? Bitterblue's almost 18 and had no idea there was an art gallery in her home??
The TOTALLY pointless Gracelings. Okay, not every Grace has to be super interesting or super useful. But did we really have to waste page space meeting a kitchen employee who has a Grace where he can smell people and know what food they'd find most desirable at that moment? He never comes up again, and the Grace is pointless (just ask people what they want!), and it was kind of annoying.
The whole “there's nothing wrong with being gay” thing. To be clear, I'm not objecting to the message. Just, it doesn't make any sense in-universe. We don't hear of any religions that forbid homosexual relationships, and we don't hear that any of the kings have banned it, we don't hear of ANY reason in-universe why people would feel like they need to hide their same-sex relations and why Bitterblue is all “Good, I'm happy, they shouldn't have to hide it.”

The best part of this book in my opinion was Po playing with a paper airplane outside and then falling off the little stone wall. Not that I was happy he fell, it was just a cute, funny moment in a book full of bland pointlessness. I mean, maybe that scene was also pointless, but at least it was cute.

Not super accurate, but short and fun

Just what the title says. There are some inaccuracies, or things stated as fact when it shouldn???t be, but the book (is it a book? It???s so short) is a fun read. It???s like a cheeky sparknotes version of history. I think I???d be annoyed if I???d paid for this ebook, but it was fun as a free read even though I basically didn???t learn anything new, lol.

I liked the leading pair of this book better than the preceding book. A few pretty steamy scenes but nothing unexpected for a historical romance novel. Good way to spend a few hundred pages.

Disappointing conclusion to the trilogy. The first two chapters are basically just one woman being super horny for a coma patient. It???s understandable why the female lead wouldn???t 100% believe the male lead???s theory that she???s the missing Dragon???s daughter, but we don???t end up getting enough actual info on why she???s so sure her mother wasn???t lying (she just says her mother wouldn???t lie to her and that???s it), and her reasoning for wanting to return to the village even if it turns out she???s really the daughter was understandable but still a bit flimsy (she just didn???t think she could rule over a parcel of land by herself?)

Christian and Rowena apparently fall in love at first sight even though it was clearly LUST at first sight. They just fight but not in the sort of fun, flirty, understandable way that the leads from the previous books in the trilogy did.

No spoilers, but the ending was too easily achieved. It???s a romance novel, sure, but after two books and 275 pages of this book it felt to me like the ending shouldn???t have been so simple and easy.

Ultimately it just felt like 90% of this book was Rowena going ???I???m not the daughter and I have no reason to stay here if you???re so devoted to your own father even though it???s literally the 12th century??? and it got annoying and unlikable pretty quickly. The first two books I really enjoyed, I don???t know why this conclusion had to be such a drag. I wonder if Ms. Archer just didn???t feel up to writing this book but had a deadline.

Interestingly written take on a Tudor woman who never shows up in fiction since she had nothing to do with Anne Boleyn. The author deliberately wrote a style that I wouldn't really call “modern” but it wasn't all “prithee, wouldst thou” - Ms. Dunn explains that we only have letters and documents, so we don't know people actually spoke that way (after all, in modern times we typically don't speak the way we write formal documents). This made the book refreshing and easy to follow.

The story itself interesting - Catherine Parr (the titular sixth wife) is a secondary character despite being the titular character, the focus is on her historical best friend, also named Catherine (called Cathy in the book). She grapples with disapproving of Catherine's choice in a fourth husband and her own complicated feelings in regards to him, before the historic downfall of many of the top players of the court from the end of Henry VIII's reign.

This is of course historical FICTION so there are some plot lines for which there is no historic concrete evidence, including one that ends up being ambiguous - since we don't see anything from Elizabeth's perspective, well...

The book was very interesting and a good read, although I did find the very beginning a little slow. Once I got into it I was reading 3 or 4 chapters a night. Great book!

A very quaint story. The characters were interesting, and I appreciated that it didn't fall in the trap of “literally everyone in town immediately loves the charming newcomer.” Even by the end of the book, there was a number of characters who had no particular interactions with Mrs. Hollis. The characters were all interesting without being “small town quirky.” There's so many characters that most of them don't really have a moment to BE “small town quirky,” so they come off more as regular people.
Remarkably, this book is set in England but is by an American author, and it feels pretty authentic. There's a few word choices here and there that maybe wouldn't be accurate to 1860s England, but nothing sticks out as an egregious Americanism - at least to me, an American.
I had no idea going into this book that it was so... religious? I mean, it's really not all that overwhelming. The characters praying to God and such makes perfect sense given the setting. The main religious aspect comes from one character being sort of wheedled into studying the Bible. It's a long process, during which that character brings up a lot of interesting points. In my opinion his conversion was sort of sudden, but it wasn't all that bad.

My biggest complaint is the writing for the teen characters seems REALLY off. One of the main characters is 13 for most of the book, and then 14, but I kept imagining he was more like 10 or 11 because of how he was behaving. I can't really pinpoint what was so off about it - it's not as if I was expecting him to be thinking about girls constantly, but a 14 year old who just goes fishing all the time and doesn't protest at all to his mother tucking him in at night? That just seemed really odd.

All in all, an enjoyable book. 4 stars because I enjoyed reading it but I'm not totally sure I'll read it again. I will say that this entire book series would be great for some light PBS tv series.

This should've been an interesting book. Two women who are basically ignored by historic fiction, one of them unfairly maligned as an evil domestic abuser, sharing the narrative before, during, and after their respective families' mutual downfalls.

But something about it just fell flat for me. I could never tell who was narrating just based on “voice”, I would usually have to turn back to double check if it was Frances or Jane narrating. At the end I didn't feel like I really KNEW either woman.

I do always appreciate historic fiction authors who make an effort to consult contemporary sources to get to the bottom of what people were like, as Higginbotham explains in her detailed author's note - for instance, while Frances has historically been portrayed as a cruel mother who abused her daughter Jane, including beating her into submission to agree to marry Guildford, Higginbotham explains that the oldest source for that portrayal dates from years after the source met Jane, and years after she was dead and had become something of a martyr.

I just can't properly explain how hard it was for me to keep up with who was talking. Everybody sounded the same, and the author makes the choice to mostly use people's titles rather than names, so trying to keep up with who Suffolk or Somerset or Northampton or Norfolk were, and never being sure when it said something like “Jane Doe, the Marchioness of wherever, and the Countess of someplace” if that was one, two, or three people.

The narrative did make sense. I have no desire to read this book again, but I think other enjoyers of historical fiction especially featuring under-represented women might enjoy it more than I did.

Well I confess I'm not actually finished reading this book yet, but I'm in the last stretch of it so I thought I'd review anyway.

I think basically the overall problem with this book is it feels like several different books kind of got mashed into one story. The beginning seems like it should some kind of “maybe magic, maybe mundane” plot, with scrying and visions of the future, and a mysterious forest woman teaching an orphan about healing herbs and stuff. Then we have a sort of fish out of water plot, as the orphan becomes a body servant in a well-to-do household, and must deal with jealousies from other servants, and unwanted attention from the son of the Master of the house. Then we get a court intrigue plot, wherein our heroine is now body servant to the Queen, and has to deal with yet more jealousies from her fellow servants, and worse - or better - unwanted attention from the King! And then it gets kind of ridiculous from there.

One of the more ridiculous things is the constant comments about the heroine. From the beginning we know that despite being poor, she's oddly beautiful, and has a grace about her like she's a member of the nobility. As the book goes on, we get more frequent mentions of how stunningly beautiful she is, and so humble! I don't mind this initially, but the part of the book I'm in now seems to be almost entirely people saying “Wow, she's so beautiful! The most beautiful woman in the room! Wow!” and it's getting boring. People are just fawning over her constantly, meanwhile the king is off trying to stop a rebellion and that barely even gets mentioned.

I can't speak to the historical inaccuracies of the book, because I personally didn't notice them. I'm not an expert of this time period, and if you aren't either, you shouldn't be bothered by any of those particular details.

If you're a fan of Elizabeth Woodville (or Wydville, or whatever), look elsewhere. She does not come off very well in this book. I've certainly seen her characterized worse, and the book does say part of her temperament is her being uncomfortable due to her pregnancies, but wow, she's awful. It does feel a bit like the author was purposely making Elizabeth come off badly so we'd better root for the heroine and Edward to get together, because them having known each other a whole 10 minutes, it must be true love, I guess!

The plot twist regarding the truth of the heroine's birth, and the fallout from it, is... well, I'd say a bit on the silly side. I don't mind that part much, though.

Overall, I feel like the first part of the book - which feels a bit like Downton Abbey but in the 1460s and a little more violent - deserves perhaps a 5, while the latter part of the book - which feels extremely tedious and padded out with repetitive scenes wherein we're told the protagonist is lovely yet so unassuming and humble and kind - would deserve perhaps a 2, so I averaged it out to 3 stars here.

Unless the end of this book is truly horrible, I'm intending to read at least the second book in the trilogy, and I hope that's an improvement, or else I won't be reading the third book. Bu I've already purchased both books anyway.

Edit: Have finished the book. Definitely the ending is a disappointment compared to the intriguing beginning. There's no real build-up or explanation for why Edward is so in love with Anne, Anne adjusts to her new identity entirely too quickly to make much sense, and everyone around her adjusts way too quickly to it as well, and the repetition of people commenting on how elegant and beautiful yet so kind and humble Anne is really gets annoying towards the last 1/4 of the book. I'll be reading the next book in the series, but I hope it's better.

I could not bring myself to finish this book. The first book was a bit unbelievable as it went on, but was still fun and moved along. This one, however, is just a long slog of nothing happening aside from every single person in the city loving or hating Anne, and if they hate Anne it???s because she???s smart and pretty and unmarried. Also she has mystical magic powers!

All in all, the main plot details this book hinges on make no real sense - as an illegitimate daughter of Henry VI, she???d have no claim to the throne at all, so why would she be a political pawn? And why is Elizabeth trying to kill her?? I get she???s a jealous woman in this book, but it???s not like it???s unheard of for kings to have mistresses. I think by this time in real life he already had several! Why on earth she???s going out of her way to try to have her husband???s mistress killed is never adequately explored, in my opinion. Or maybe it is later in the book - like I said, I couldn???t finish it. There???s plenty of other books set in this era that probably don???t focus on an incredible Mary Sue - who???s pretty, has magic powers, everyone loves her, she???s successful at everything. There???s even at least a few books on Edward???s historical mistresses, whom Elizabeth did not try to have killed. I would rather read those.

Hopefully the third book isn???t such a slog of basically nothing happening, and will explain some things.

Good romance! The unfortunate misunderstandings between the two characters were entirely reasonable, the villain's motivations make sense once he reveals them, and the solution to the plot doesn't feel like a deus ex machina. The sex scenes were pretty steamy but didn't drag the entire plot down. The story also felt like the perfect length - it didn't end abruptly or just keep dragging on forever. I have no complaints. Looking forward to reading the other two books in the series.

The shortest review I can give this book: I read the last 4 chapters (around 100 pages) in one go. I haven't been able to read more than 2 chapters of a book in one go in like 15 years, but I HAD to keep reading at the end of this book. Excellent.

For a longer review: There's a problem with historical fiction in that in order to be as accurate as possible, the characters get less and less sympathetic, simply because things that were normal back then are generally not acceptable these days. I think this book did an excellent job of portraying characters who aren't very palatable by modern standards in their accurate(ish) historical setting. Pretty early on we get something for the three main characters that manages to be very sympathetic even though they each have some unpleasant characteristics: We have Maelgwyn (referred to as Noble all but like 5 times), who very obviously cheats on his wife, allows his friend to torment the court (including his wife), makes no effort to try to make his new wife feel included, and is general kind of a dick - but we also see that he's very burdened by trying to take care of his kingdom, and it takes him some effort to care for his wife who is the niece of the man who killed his father. Then we have Isabel, the wife - she's prudish, she makes no effort to try to relate to her new subjects, she's kind of haughty about things are more civilized where she comes from (which is, humorously, only a few miles from the main setting); but she can't help her upbringing, nobody in the setting tries to be friendly to her or include her in anything, her husband cheats on her, and she has nothing to do all day; and finally we have the titular fool, Gwirion - he's crude, his pranks go too far, he's very vicious to Isabel; but he's also essentially a slave in the kingdom, he has no real status or title, he basically can't even kiss a woman without the king's permission, and his life is ultimately entirely dependent on the whims of the king.

As the story goes on, Isabel and Gwirion in particular become more sympathetic, and Noble at least becomes more understandable (both to us and to Isabel).

The main characters grow as people even though the book takes place over the course of exactly one year (not counting the prologue), in a believable way.

The ending is... wow. It makes sense entirely based on how the characters developed, and I loved that the author left what EXACTLY happened in the climax vague. Every possibility made full sense given what the characters went through, and ultimately what EXACTLY happened isn't the important part.

Bonus: The author fully admits in her notes that she took a lot of liberties with the storytelling - for instance, the real life Maelgwyn died before the book takes place, Isabel Mortimer never existed, and there wasn't anything like a “court jester/fool” position in the setting (although in the story itself, Isabel points that out - that on the continent they have court jesters and it seemed like Gwirion was filling that role, although nobody in the kingdom had ever heard of such a thing). It's historical fiction so I never expect anything to be 100% accurate, but I do appreciate when the authors explain that they changed this, this, and this for storytelling purposes.
Also the author includes a pronunciation guide which was VERY HELPFUL.

Notes: There are some spicy scenes but it's clean overall. There's mention of “exploring bodies” and lifting legs and crying out in ecstasy but nothing more explicit than that is described.

“Compulsively readable” is right! This is by no means a masterpiece, but I found it very interesting. I was right with Mutny when she was burning with rage about how selfish Nefertiti was acting, how frustrated other people were with her not following plans, how worried they were when pharaoh was getting really unhinged. It's a good read.
The last 40 or so pages of the book seem kind of abrupt, though. Things just... happen. So quickly. You're like “Wait, what?” I wish the ending was a little more fleshed out.
Also I don't know if I just majorly misread something, but the end of one chapter refers to Nefertiti as being 27, then the next chapter says she's 31 but the children who had just been born in the previous chapter are 9 years old. So the kids aged 9 years but Nefertiti only aged 4?? Very odd.

Other note: I love one of the reviews complaining about the main character being “13-year-oldish”. She's literally 13 at the beginning of the book. She's a teenager for the majority of the book. I'm not sure what you're expecting there. A 13 year old whose entire life HAS to revolve around her prettier sister is going to sound like a 13 year old. Sorry?

I wasn't expecting a lot going into this - it's a YA romance retelling of Beauty and the Beast, so I wasn't exactly expecting Charlotte Bronte here. But, uh... yikes. The basic premise as set out in the first few chapters is interesting - a young witch, raised by an evil adoptive mother to take revenge on the kingdom, somehow, for some reason; her new husband despises her because she's a witch and he was forced to marry her rather than the woman he was originally set to wed.
The writing just made it so hard to get through. I think the heroine says “my adoptive/adopted mother” like 10 times in the first chapter, which is 9 pages long. We get it! The third chapter gives us a sentence that's like “My nightmare faded away to just a nightmare, a bad dream.” I'm paraphrasing, but it was really repetitive.
This book couldn't hold my interest and I ended up skimming the rest of it.

I gave it 2 stars because to be totally fair, I'm not the target audience for a Young Adult novel (a few of the things I found cringey, like the name Lady Eville of the town of Nihil - like nihilism?? - I think I would've found funny if I was 12, so that didn't affect my star rating). I don't think the writing is really up to snuff even for it being YA romance, but it's certainly not the WORST thing I've ever read. Even as an actual Young Adult I definitely read worse stuff.

Great fun!

What can I say? This book is great. I think even if you???re completely unfamiliar with the story of Oliver Twist (book, movie, or musical) you can enjoy this story, although obviously it doesn???t hurt to have some background knowledge. The author does a great job giving enough personality that everyone feels like a distinct character even if they only speak for a few lines. Olivia???s internal struggles of trying to be a proper lady while helping out the orphans as well as sometimes being so panicked she can???t think straight felt believable. Maybe the solution to one of the problems at the end felt a bit too easy, but I think any other solution would???ve felt super cheesy. I guess I???d give this a 4.5 star rating, so rounded up - 5!
Just a note to potential readers, this book draws more from the musical Oliver! than from the book Oliver Twist, although it includes book character Monks. If you???re familiar with the musical, you can spot a few pieces of dialogue that appear to be referencing song lyrics, which I thought was cute.

I love Anne of Cleves, but I just couldn't get into this book. The parts that featured Henry VIII weren't very interesting, and of course it's a book about his wives so he's in it quite a few times. I liked the invention of a hopeless love between court painter Hans Holbein and Anne. I just gave up reading. It's not boring, exactly, it's just... not intriguing, I guess? I'm not sure. I read books before I go to bed and I found I was putting off going to bed so I wouldn't have to read the book. It's not BAD. I'm sure for readers in 1952 who didn't have a wealth of other, more exciting Tudor fiction it was pretty good.
Also my copy (published in 1952!) was full of typos and there's some occasionally confusing sentence structure, so I'd have to go back and reread something three times to figure out who was talking. Like it would say “...he said” but the dialogue sounded like it should've been said by Anne.

I mean I love reading but it took me a month to get through 40 pages. My recommendation is to check it out of a library if possible, don't buy unless you can get it for super cheap.

Also this isn't really a review, but the cover for the 1952 version is hilarious - we all know approximately what Anne looked like because of a few paintings of her, but the 1952 cover features a 1950s-style pinup of an almost blue-skinned woman with shoulder-length black hair and curved bangs. Looks absolutely nothing like Anne of Cleves, it's actually pretty funny.

Great book! I read it just for an easy read, so I was surprised by how much depth there is. Punches aren't pulled at all (four characters die! One almost does!) while keeping things perfectly appropriate for a young reader. The main message is really that things aren't what they appear to be - everyone has secrets, people you think are mean can be reasonable if given the chance.
I wish they'd made a sequel! I would love to read more adventures about Cecile. It's a shame the company canceled this line.
Despite being an adult and this book being aimed more for 12 year olds, I really enjoyed it. It's quite a quick read (partly due to the font choice and size of the pages), and it doesn't feel dumbed down just because it's for pre-teens. It doesn't get graphic or inappropriate, but the overall message is pretty pleasantly mature (as I said, “things aren't always what they seem”). Definitely recommend.

The accompanying doll is pretty scary, though. I mean the dress for the doll is gorgeous, but the doll's face creeped me out. That doesn't affect my star rating, though.

My only real complaint with this book is the use of gratuitous French. They???re already speaking French in the story, why do they say ???Tiens??? or ???Bien sur???? If you don???t speak French you can sort of figure out what they???re saying from context sometimes, but about half the time you have no idea what???s being said - because there speaking French in a story where they???re technically already speaking French.
It was an enjoyable read. Not life-altering, but an interesting story that???s more about characters and how tapestries are made, with no super dramatic plot.

This was such a weirdly uneven book. Parts of it would be written really well, intriguing, great read. Other parts, not so much. Right off the bat I noticed this odd quirk where a bunch of characters would start a sentence with “Well,”. It would happen so many times on one page! Other phrases would get repeated within like 3 paragraphs of each other. Very noticeable. Then there'd be a lot of nothing really happening.

I completely understand as a historical fiction account of a historical person you obviously have to stick to the script, so to speak, so of course things like Sisi NOT standing up to her aunt/mother-in-law at 16 makes sense even though it's frustrating. The author explains in the end that certain people were excluded from the narrative because they weren't really relevant to Sisi, but it's still extremely odd to me that not once did Franz Joseph's father ever get mentioned even though he was alive during the timeframe of this book. Did Sisi seriously have no thoughts at all about her father-in-law, the man married to her biggest enemy (Sophie)? Or her siblings - the beginning of the book involves Sisi figuring out how to stand up against her younger brother and then all the things she does in order to make her sister Helene look good, and then after Sisi gets married her siblings get mentioned like twice. We don't even get to see her at her childhood home as an adult, interacting with her family, we just get told that she went there and it was fine until her mother told her to leave. There's also absolutely no mention of Sisi's older brother, and sure I don't expect him to be part of the narrative because he didn't seem to have much to do with Sisi's life as empress, but it would seem like SOMEONE mentioning the disgraced oldest brother who abdicated his position as heir at some point would've made sense, especially with the overall idea of duty and commitment?

I also didn't really find the second falling in love part very convincing. Sisi hates Andrassy and then basically just doesn't hate him anymore one time? Because she likes Hungary?? There's not really anything shown that made me convinced of their love, other than that Sisi appreciated SOMEONE finally talking to her about politics.

Overall it just felt like the book was uneven in terms of quality. One chapter would be great, and then one would be amateurish and repetitive. After 490 pages I ultimately don't feel like I really KNOW any of the people in the book. I don't have a good feel for why Franz Joseph is so tolerant of Sophie - yes she's his mother and yes she helped get him where he is, but but is he so fine with her basically acting as the empress and bullying his wife that he loves so much? Why was Helene so meek and wanting to be a nun? Why was Sisi so... everything? I do want to read the sequel, hopefully the writing quality will be improved.

I'm kind of surprised by all the vitriol for this book. I think it's silly to be totally enraged that a piece of historical fiction with a totally invented character isn't 100% accurate.

Anyway, I feel like parts of this book were great and parts were really weak. The main character, Claudia, has prophetic visions that she can't control. Once she gets to be about 14, the visions barely get mentioned. They do come up, but not nearly as often, to the point where I wondered for a while if the author had just forgotten about that aspect.

It was also kind of silly that Claudia fell desperately in love with Pilate, to the point of using a spell on him, and then she I guess falls out of love with him even though it's clear he's actually quite fond of her (staying married to her even though he could've divorced her like 4 different times), and then she has an affair with some other guy. I mean, it's silly that her character did that, but it's interesting writing. The really silly thing is the guy she has an affair with is totally boring. She keeps talking about being so totally in love with him, and that she has NOTHING without him, but he has almost no personality and they have no real interactions besides him thanking her and then they have sex and a bath. It just got more and more annoying to read her pining after this guy who's said and done nothing particularly interesting, and then her wasting away because she has nothing without him, forgetting her child, her wealth, her position, and her husband who loves and respects her.

My main complaint is the number of typos in this book, though! That's certainly not the author's fault. The editors and publishers are supposed to catch the typos and correct them. But there's just an absurd amount of typos. One or two in a professionally published book, fine. But there's at least 10! Things like verb tenses being wrong, incorrect pluralizations, and spelling character names wrong - there's a character named Holtan whose name is spelled Holton at least once. It's quite annoying.

Overall, I enjoyed the book, but the main character got on my nerves the longer the book went on. If you're a huge history buff who gets annoyed by things being wrong, steer clear of this book - a few pieces of historical timeline are off a bit, and things like them giving the “thumbs up” to save a gladiator when historians are pretty sure thumbs down meant to save them. It didn't bother me at all, but from the other reviews, clearly some people are just utterly enraged by that kind of thing.

This book is so weird.

While certain aspects of this book do grow repetitive, they're written in such a way that doesn't feel like the author is just copy+pasting to make the book longer (other than in one spot, Joe says the exact same sentence twice, which is weird).
I was surprised by the other reviews - I didn't realize this was supposed to be “Christian fiction”? The characters are Christians, but it's not like it's unusual for white people in 1866 to believe in God or anything. Anna (the female lead) is of course concerned with her reputation, given the time period. It would've been nice to see a bit of expansion on Joe's assurances that basically nobody cares about things like that in town. They say it a couple times but it doesn't really come up at all - the handful of female characters don't comment one way or the other, and the men are just happy that there's an attractive single woman in town, so there's really no discussion about impropriety or reputations at all beyond Joe saying that nobody cares.

This was a very quick read, and I liked that the book wasn't just one extremely long sustained misunderstanding with everything getting wrapped up 3 pages from the end. Oddly, one of the most enjoyable aspects was the author's note at the end - Ms. Gist's very lighthearted and frank explanations about basically fibbing some historical facts to make the story work better and to keep her work from being repetitive (specifically mentioning that she didn't want to include yet another July 4th celebration even though it would've been historically accurate) were written in a very delightful manner.

My main complaint is all the rain. Of course I don't know what weather was like in Seattle in the 1860s, but thunderstorms in Seattle today are pretty rare - I believe there were two last year and that was very unusual - and yet it always seems to be thunderstorming in this book.