A well-researched, engrossing tale with a strong French hero for fans of historical fiction.
A young woman enters the household of one of French history’s most famous mistresses, Madame du Barry, in this novel.
In 1788, Véronique Clair has left behind her home in Burgundy and a marriage proposal to apprentice in the household of Madame du Barry at the Château de Louveciennes in a small suburb of Paris. On the way, she meets fellow apprentices Chloe and Pauline, and all three grapple with the feelings of being far from home as well as examining the realities of working as servants in a noble household. The household manager, Gaspard, takes an instant dislike to Véronique, a Black woman. He demands to see the papers that prove she was born free merely to cause her discomfort. Flinn’s sequel explores the options for women in the lower classes of French society, particularly Black women, as Véronique struggles to find her place among her white counterparts at Louveciennes. Not only does Madame du Barry make the occasional appearance in the story, but the author also delivers a reimagining of the real-life Louis-Benoit Zamor. Zamor, a Black page and du Barry’s confidant, is an intriguing inclusion. At one point, Véronique muses: “I’d noticed, at dinners, the guests always seemed to be more interested in the page than in Madame. They were always asking her about Zamor, as if he were a child or a prop that didn’t speak. Many times, he would stare straight ahead, his expression flat, as if bored of it all.” He becomes intertwined with Véronique as the story progresses, with Flinn expertly blurring the lines between fact and fiction. Also included in the tale is a glimpse of citizens’ rising dissatisfaction with the lavish lifestyles of the French nobility as Véronique and her fellow apprentices stay at a rural inn, emphasizing that the story’s time period is practically on the eve of the French Revolution. Though perhaps a bit brief (only 127 pages), the novel is a satisfying, soul-searching, and exciting continuation of the hero’s saga, ultimately leaving readers hoping for another installment.
A well-researched, engrossing tale with a strong French hero for fans of historical fiction.Pub Date: July 6, 2023
ISBN: 979-8986060033
Page Count: 132
Publisher: Gilded Orange Books
Review Posted Online: July 31, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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