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28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointing, June 5, 2007
This review is from: True Grace: The Life and Times of an American Princess (Hardcover)
I picked up this book with very high hopes, but Ms. Leigh left me utterly disappointed. No new facts were revealed and the book seemed to focus mainly on Grace's romantic relationships, with the surprising exception of her marriage with Prince Ranier, which was quickly reviewed. More insight, perhaps, was given to Grace's troubling relationship with her father but, again, her marriage to the Prince and residence in Monaco over the course of 25 years was covered in a minimum number of pages. The book ended suddenly with Grace's death - - no mention of her funeral, how her husband and children dealt with her sudden passing or the people of Monaco's grief and the longterm effect of an American princess in their country. No updates on the children, particularly Caroline, who matured and took Grace's place as a beloved princess of Monaco, or Ranier, carrying on without her.
To add insult to injury, the book is rife with typos and mistakes. And a minor point, but the photographic section in the middle of the book is stingy and leaves much to be desired.
All in all, a very sad effort for an actress and princess who deserved a better biography.
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Grace deserved better..., November 13, 2007
This review is from: True Grace: The Life and Times of an American Princess (Hardcover)
This is a disappointingly brief and shallow biography of a princess who still awaits the long and detailed biography she deserves. As other reviewers have mentioned, Leigh gets even simple facts wrong (at one point, she states that Aristotle Onassis and Jackie Onassis divorced, though this never happened). For someone who claims to be a "BBC trained journalist", a simple mistake such as this has repercussions for the rest of the book's truth. And because Leigh repeatedly makes controversial assertions about Princess Grace's (such as her affairs before and after her marriage), simple mistakes can't be taken lightly here. In addition, Leigh seems to have conducted numerous interviewers with Grace's family and friends, and even acquires new information about Grace--such as her affair with a friend's husband. However, she also borrows liberally from previous biographies of Princess Grace, and lacks the sources that a more seasoned well-connected biographer would be able to contact. I also can't believe that the book contains only a small photographic section--and no photographs of Grace's children! All in all, I came away with a sour feeling from the book. Even though Leigh claims to have written a revolutionary biography of Grace, I thought she only skimmed the surface a lot of the time. I didn't ever feel that I got close to Grace and gained in-depth knowledge and insight, which is what a good biography should do. Bottom line: save your cash and wait for the day when a more discerning and incisive biographer steps up to the plate.
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14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Good Book, April 1, 2007
This review is from: True Grace: The Life and Times of an American Princess (Hardcover)
The book does have the glaring mistake that the other reader mentions--referring to Aristotle Onassis's divorce from Jackie Kennedy--and that will surely be corrected in the paperback version. Probably the author meant to convey that the couple may have been thinking about divorce when Onassis became ill and passed away. The impressive thing about the book is how well documented it all is and how candid Wendy Leigh is about explaining her sources both in endnotes and in an essay/appendix on her sources. She even says that novelist Graham Greene believed that Princess Grace was murdered. This is recounted in one of the lengthier chapter endnotes and somewhat discounted by Leigh (since Greene's nephew said the author had never mentioned it to him). But it is interesting and surprising, and the fact that it got relegated to an easy-to-miss endnote shows that the writer and publisher have some put some restraint on the sensational claims. I have read many of the other books about Grace Kelly, and Leigh's book does mostly fulfill its aim (and promise to publisher Thomas Dunne) of not just warming over previously published material. She's thorough in that way, but much of this new material concerns lengthening the list of Grace Kelly's likely lovers. Leigh also resists repeating things that previous writers have covered, such as GK's acting in summer stock theater in Colorado, her relationships with Gene Lyons and Mark Miller, well-documented things like that. If this were the only book a person read on Grace Kelly, the reader might get a view of her recklessness that outweighed her other traits and talents. Reading Robert Lacey's book or James Spada's along with this one would furnish a more balanced view.
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