Customer Reviews

The French bride

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The French Bride came to me as a recommendation from an online forum, and while the story was solid, Charles the protagonist was just too horrid for words, unfaithful, a real boor to everyone, while the heroine was resourceful in trying to win his love, but daft for even wanting to. Just as I was about to give up on the book, it turned interesting. Anne is sent to the Bastille and eventually everyone tracks her down, but alas, too late.
The historical aspect, prior to the French Revolution, was good, but delivered in huge chunks, with obsession on clothes. The hero was vile, the heroine too good to be true, and the potential lover Captain O'Neil, a good character, but he ended up as a mere plot device to trigger the feelings of Charles that he really did love Anne after all, and then later, a potential rescuer of Anne himself, though for various reasons he does not.
The ending is way too rushed, the conclusion leaving you wanting more in a lot of ways, but not able to get it. Overall, this is a solid historical novel, but a failure as a romance.

Ms. Anthony sometimes doesn't make strictly likeable characters, but she does make believeable ones. That is what I admire about her historical fiction work, there is nothing saccharine about them.

In this standalone sequel to Clandara, Ms. Anthony now centers her attention on the child of Sir James and Katherine Macdonald, refugess from a turbulent Scotland now sheltering in King Louis XV's France. Exposed to King Louis' court from childhood, their son, Charles Macdonald, is said to be the image of his wicked uncle, Hugh Macdonald. And unfortunately, Charles is hateful, hateful to his mistress, to his parents, and to his wife, who is determined to make him break from his lifestyle if she can. But the suffering Charles Macdonald so carelessly causes is the heart of this novel and Ms. Anthony portrays the treacherous allurements and machination of court life with surprising depth and breadth for such a slim volume of only 200+ pages.

The only weakness in the novel, I think, is that Anne de Bernard comes across as something of a Mary Sue and falls deeply, irrevocably in love with Charles very quickly. That being said, it also stands as a stark contrast to a corrupt court that she manoeuvers through with courage and determination.

Without giving away the ending, I can say it is not strictly a happy one, certainly not tied up in a nice, neat knot; but there is redemption.

Needless to say, I really like this book. Tense and sexy, I would say this is a forerunner to the bodice rippers of the 70s and 80s but without the explicit sex.

FROM THE BACKCOVER AND FLYLEAF:

She was Anne de Bernard, a beautiful, sheltered girl, and the richest heiress in France.

He was Charles Macdonald, a handsome, dissolute and impoverished young Scots noble, whose love affairs were as audacious as they were notorious.

Their marriage was one of convenience, arranged by men of power, scandalous even by the standards of a corrupt age. Yet even more shocking was Anne's discovery that, mocked, humiliated and degraded, she was nevertheless falling irresistibly in love with her hot-blooded, icily arrogant young husband -- and was willing to battle the most desirable woman in the most decadent court in Europe for his heart... Louise de Vitale...

At twenty-three, the Baroness Louise de Vitale was a widow, and one of the reigning godesses of love in the debauched court of Louis XV. Only the King's consort, Madame Du Barry herself, could match Louise in beauty and amorous skill, and none equalled the Baroness in pride and ruthless passion. This was the woman who had enslaved Charles Macdonald and in turn had been enslaved by the dashing young Lord. This was Anne de Bernard's pitiless rival -- a mistress of cunning and intrigue who lured the young French bride into a web of evil from which there was no escape.