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A review by awesomebrandi
The Women of Chateau Lafayette by Stephanie Dray
3.0
I was sure this was going to be a five star book at the beginning. I fell in love right off the bat.. so, how did it end up at only three stars?
This historical fiction book follows three different, but (mostly) connected timelines of women involved with the real life Château de Chavaniac, which was indeed the birthplace of the Marquis de Lafayette; famous US & French revolutionary leader. The three featured women are Adrienne de Noailles (Lafayettes wife), Beatrice Chanler, and fictional character Marthe Simone. The book is centered during the Revolutionary war(s), WWI and WW2, depending on the character.
The women are generally heralded as capable, strong women, leading change in each of their time periods, which I loved. However, this book kept adding more, and more, and more, romance elements and eventually, my eyes started bleeding at the endless missives of the passionate love Adrienne felt for her husband, which was repeated ad nauseum. I thought the book largely moved along well, but in the second half it started going downhill. By 70% in I was so ready to be done, and had to force myself through the back 30%.
Overall, I just think if this book had been well.. 30% shorter overall, it would have been five stars. Some elements were really fantastic, but it just ended up dragging so much. I know that this is largely built on historical fact with the first two characters, but I ended up finding Adrienne to be rather insufferable in the end. Also, although it's typical with war centered novels, the ableism and negative speech about disability and injuries got to be over the top as well. There's no denying that major injuries have complicated results for humans, but the book just falls into some bad disability tropes and kind of beats you about the head with them. Again, some editing could have turned this into a five star book for me.
I am still interested in reading some of her other books. You might love this book to pieces, it has some great elements. It just really needed additional editing. Pull a few minor characters, edit out some of the fluff that really didn't add to the story (for me), boom..
This historical fiction book follows three different, but (mostly) connected timelines of women involved with the real life Château de Chavaniac, which was indeed the birthplace of the Marquis de Lafayette; famous US & French revolutionary leader. The three featured women are Adrienne de Noailles (Lafayettes wife), Beatrice Chanler, and fictional character Marthe Simone. The book is centered during the Revolutionary war(s), WWI and WW2, depending on the character.
The women are generally heralded as capable, strong women, leading change in each of their time periods, which I loved. However, this book kept adding more, and more, and more, romance elements and eventually, my eyes started bleeding at the endless missives of the passionate love Adrienne felt for her husband, which was repeated ad nauseum. I thought the book largely moved along well, but in the second half it started going downhill. By 70% in I was so ready to be done, and had to force myself through the back 30%.
Overall, I just think if this book had been well.. 30% shorter overall, it would have been five stars. Some elements were really fantastic, but it just ended up dragging so much. I know that this is largely built on historical fact with the first two characters, but I ended up finding Adrienne to be rather insufferable in the end. Also, although it's typical with war centered novels, the ableism and negative speech about disability and injuries got to be over the top as well. There's no denying that major injuries have complicated results for humans, but the book just falls into some bad disability tropes and kind of beats you about the head with them. Again, some editing could have turned this into a five star book for me.
I am still interested in reading some of her other books. You might love this book to pieces, it has some great elements. It just really needed additional editing. Pull a few minor characters, edit out some of the fluff that really didn't add to the story (for me), boom..