The Accidental Empress

I've been meaning to pick this book up for years. I first heard of the book series when I discovered the musical about Elisabeth of Austria. I was particularly drawn to the summary of the second book, but I wanted to start at the beginning.    Set in the mid-1800s, teenage Elisabeth (Sisi) travels with her family to see her sister Helene married off to Emperor Franz Joseph. To everyone's surprise, Franz chooses Sisi over Helene to be his wife. Though initially interested in the Emperor, Sisi soon realizes the gravity of not only being royalty but also a wife. Making this more difficult is her overbearing mother-in-law who has her son wrapped around her little finger. Sisi laments as she loses her freedom, control of her children, and lively spirit.    Being familiar with the story as I was going in, I feel I didn't like it as much as I could have years back. I enjoyed the scenes between Sisi and Helene, particularly in the beginning, but I found myself waiting for the parts of Sisi's life I find the most intriguing, which I realized will be the focus of the next book. Fitting as it would make for a tediously long book in a single volume, but at the same time, I was feeling let down. I'm excited now that I can move on to Sisi. 

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.