The Courtier's Secret [Paperback]

Donna Russo Morin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 27, 2009

France, 1680. Louis XIV, the Sun King, is at the height of his power. The court at Versailles is a paradise for privileged young women. Jeanne Yvette Mas Du Bois is unlike most other courtiers. Her thirst for knowledge often incurs her father's brutal wrath. But her uncle encourages Jeanne's independence, secretly teaching her fencing in the palace's labyrinthine basement. . .

When two of the king's Musketeers are beset by criminals who are mere feet from Jeanne's fencing lesson, she intervenes, saving one of the Musketeers' lives. Hidden behind her mask, Jeanne is mistaken for a man. As "Jean Luc," Jeanne is admitted to an inner circle where she learns of an assassination plot against the Queen. As Jean Luc, she is permitted to bring her intelligence and swordsmanship to bear. And as Jean Luc, she is free to love the man of her choosing. . .even if she can never have him. Now, with the Queen in jeopardy, and her own double life making her privy to the tangled intrigues at court, Jeanne is in a powerful yet increasingly perilous position.

Brimming with lush period detail and vivid, unforgettable characters, The Courtier's Secret takes readers into a fascinating, intriguing world of pageantry, adventure, betrayals, and secrets.

Reading Group Guide Inside

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Kicked out of the convent at seventeen, Jeanne Du Bois, the heroine of Morin's uneven historical, returns to Louis XIV's court only to rebel against her father's plans to marry her off to a fop. With training and a false moustache provided by a sympathetic uncle, Jeanne disguises herself as Jean-Luc, a gifted swordsman who fights alongside musketeers Henri and Antoine. She leads a tricky double life, particularly when, dressed as Jeanne, she wins Henri's heart and helps him uncover a threat to the queen. Morin fills her tale with maidens, mistresses and musketeers mired in intrigue, but her attempts to heighten dramatic intensity prove artificial: Jeanne's father is not only tyrannical, he's abusive; royal mistresses are not only conniving, they're murderous; and Jeanne's visit to a courtesan for advice seems particularly contrived. The novice novelist makes up for such simplistic technique by supplying lots of action, as Jeanne goes through quick costume changes, one minute a voluptuous virgin about to be raped, another a daring do-gooder, rapier in hand. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

"Compelling. . .brings vividly to life the constrained life of the noble Frenchwoman." ----Allie Bates, author of Earthchild

"Exquisitely done. . .fabulous. . .unforgettable characters." ----Marilyn Rondeau

Product Details

• Paperback: 369 pages
• Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corporation; Original edition (January 27, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0758226918
• ISBN-13: 978-0758226914
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #999,483 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Donna Russo Morin is the award winning author of historical fiction. Donna has dabbled as a model and actor, working on Showtime's Brotherhood and Martin Scorsese's The Departed. A graduate of the University of Rhode Island, Donna lives on the south shore of Rhode Island with her two sons, Devon and Dylan, her greatest works in progress.

Visit her website at www.donnarussomorin.com, Friend her at http://www.facebook.com/Donna.Russo.Morin, and follow her at @DonnaRussoMorin.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars engaging seventeenth century Musketeer romance, January 30, 2009

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Courtier's Secret (Paperback)

When Jeanne Du Bois turned seventeen, the convent where she lived for a decade kicked her out due to a lack of payments by her odious dad. She goes to the court of the Louis XIV in Versailles, where her family is in attendance as part of the Sun King's retinue. Her abusive father Gaston decides to marry her off to some pathetic noble over the objection of his wife Adelaide whom he considers a womb-loser; however her Uncle Jules encourages her to be all that she can be. He gives her fencing lessons, male garb and a mustache. Ergo Jean-Luc is born.

Jean Luc joins the musketeers as a loyal comrade to Henri and Antoine. Meanwhile Jeanne falls in love with her brother in arms Henri; he reciprocates though remains ignorant that Jeanne is Jean. As Jean-Luc turned to Uncle Jules, Jeanne turns to courtesan Madam de L'Enclos for advice with men. However, as she struggles with both identities, she learns of a plot to assassinate Queen Marie-Therese. The three musketeers vow to save their queen even at risk to their lives.

The spins to this engaging seventeenth century Musketeer romance are the gender bending Jeanne and the fact most of the support cast including the heroine's father are nasty hedonistic sociopaths although there are those who are kind to Jeanne like her uncle and courtesan. The story line is fast-paced from the moment Uncle Jules trains his niece and never slows down as Jeanne falls in love when she was a young man.

Harriet Klausner

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A breath of fresh air, October 19, 2010

By 

L. Stephenson (Dallas, TX) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Courtier's Secret (Paperback)

I thoroughly enjoyed this book when I read it just after it was released. At that point it seemed every other author was writing something on the Tudors and beating the subject to death. I found this book on the "new fiction" table and the synopsis on the back convinced me to buy it. Finally I found something that not only deviated from the Tudors era, but it also left England and went to France. I enjoyed being able to get a point of view of the French from French characters and the characters themselves were very enjoyable. I thought this book was a good solid debut.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good story, poor editing, March 13, 2009

By 

Delamaine "Formerly Belacane" (Seattle Eastside) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Courtier's Secret (Paperback)

Is it so bad for me to want to see books produced in a professional manner? The most glaring error in this book is that Louis XIV's final mistress (and secret wife) Francoise d'Aubigny or d'Aubigne, is misspelled as Francois throughout much of the book (which is the male version of the name). Here and there it is correctly spelled, but about 2/3 of the time she is referred to in casual conversation as "Francois." Distressing.

There are also a number of typos ('mecri' rather than 'merci,' for example) and at least one big fat grammatical error. "Largely ignored by his own mother, this woman [Louis' old nurse] had given the young Louis some of the only tenderness he had known as a child." When you have an intro to a sentence like this, it's supposed to describe the person immediately following the comma...which means that this sentence reads as if the old nurse had been ignored by Louis' mother. Which is not, obviously, the point the author is trying to make.

Yeah, I'm a nitpicker! I hate this stuff. But this is the fault of the proofreaders and editors. The story is engaging, pretty short (about a 1.5 hour read), and it doesn't have too much sex in it. Louis XIV is (thankfully) portrayed as a real man rather than a despot figurehead. I enjoyed reading about Jeanne's distress at the way of life that women were supposed to lead, and how she got around it.

The only real flaw in the writing is that at the beginning of the book, the prose is extremely flowery (more so than you would expect, even in a period piece). This settles down after a few chapters, although there are still overdone sentences here and there that sound like a 10th-grader's attempt at literary sophistication. I can't find the one that irritated me the most, but it was something very prosaic - putting a spoon into a filled cup, for example - and it was described something like this: "The metallic glint of the implement vanished as it became immersed in the vessel of foaming liquid on the scarred table before her." This is just too much frippery to describe putting a spoon in a cup.

Somehow when Edith Wharton wrote like this, it sounded good. Nowadays, not so much. A good vacation read, a good library read.