Book Review

I started this book on Friday...

...and finished in last night. I love to read, and I really enjoyed this book. It's historical fiction, centered around a girl named Gabrielle who lives during the French Revolution. If you liked The Other Boleyn Girl, you'd like it. It's written in the form of a memoir Gabrielle is writing to her children years after the Revolution, when Napoleon Bonaparte is making his last stand and Gabrielle is living with her children in exile in England. You learn that Gabrielle is an aristocrat who has never met her parents (her father died when she was young and her mother sent her off to be raised first by a wet nurse and then at a convent). Her brother, as her guardian, is a creeper who yanks her out of her schooling to come home and prepare for marriage...when she's 11! After a few years, she meets a cute boy in the town near her family's estate, and they eventually fall in love. Her family won't let her marry him, and instead make her marry this disgusting old Baron who also happens to be her cousin. Gross. He treats her like crap for years, with the only positive part of her life being the birth of a daughter. Her husband dies, leaving her penniless, and her brother won't take her back. Through friends she finds she has a relative who's an aristocrat living in Paris, where the bulk of the novel is set. The book chronicles Gabrielle's life and its eventual intersection with that of her childhood sweetheart, while at the same time explaining and offering a unique view of the events before, during, and after the French Revolution.
Like I said, I really enjoyed it--but then again, I like history, anything French, and a romantic story. Word to the wise: there are some uncomfortable/racy parts (milder than The Other Boleyn Girl, however) and the ending isn't as happy as one would hope.