The Apprentice

The Apprentice: Love and Scandal in the Kingdom of Naples was written by one of my favorite authors Christine De Melo. It is her 16th novel and I have enjoyed them all. However, this story is peculiar.

The publisher's summary:

Naples, Italy 1600: In a desperate attempt to avoid an undesirable fate, “Carlo” dispatches an urgent letter to estranged cousin, Giovanni Balducci, on the eve of the Florentine Maestro's departure to Naples. The deceptive youth convinces Giovanni that he needs an apprentice, so they travel south to complete important commissions, including the adornment of the macabre San Gaudioso catacombs. What began as an adventure takes a perilous turn when the apprentice falls in love with a local monk.

Carlo meets the famed nun, Sister Giulia di Marco, and her confessor, Father Aniello Arcieri, a few years later while restoring an altarpiece in a church. The charismatic pair gradually draw the lonely artist into their scandalous Confraternity of Carnal Charity, whose wealthy noble acolytes believe divine glory can be achieved through sexual ecstasy. Unable to continue living a lie, Carlo confesses a big secret to Sister Giulia. The crafty nun wastes no time assigning the novitiate a prominent role within the cult, which soon captures the attention of the Holy Inquisition. To make matters worse, the priest leading the investigation is someone the artist knows all too well.

This gripping account of forbidden love and danger revolves around actual historical accounts. The author has spent considerable time researching in Naples, especially within the mysterious and bizarre underground catacombs.

If I had never heard about sex cults before, The Apprentice would not have been plausible. However, I once worked on a legal case where a prostitute claimed that salvation could only be obtained through sex with her. This prostitute requested that her home be exempt from property taxes because it was a church. Of course, she lost. Had I not been involved with the case, I probably would not have finished this book. The plot is bizarre even though it is plausible. I enjoyed, though, reading about the artists. I learned how they worked on paintings, obtained jobs and that they frequently were away from home working on commissions. The twist at the midway point I did not see coming and was a surprise. The plot changed significantly here and I am not sure it was for the better.

3 out of 5 stars.

Cor Rotto

Cor Rotto is an historical fiction account of Catherine Carey Knollys, niece of Anne Boleyn. She is also rumored to be the bastard daughter of Henry VIII. Per Webster's dictionary the title means corrupt, depraved, immoral or, in my opinion, rotten to the core. However, the author gave a different definition: heartbroken.

The publisher's summary:

Catherine Carey has been dreaming the same dream for three years, since the bloody execution of her aunt Queen Anne Boleyn. Her only comfort is that she and her family are safe in Calais, away from the intrigues of Henry VIII’s court. But now Catherine has been chosen to serve Henry VIII’s new wife, Queen Anne of Cleves. Just before she sets off for England, she learns the family secret: the true identity of her father, a man she considers a monster. One she will shortly meet.

This compelling novel tells the life story of a woman who survived being close to the crown and became one of Queen Elizabeth I’s closest confidants.

I loved Catherine's story.  I view her life as charmed given her wealth, loving husband and large family that got along with each other. Serving five queens of England, she had great jobs.  She worked for Anne Boleyn, Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard, Mary 1 and Elizabeth 1. The character who used the Latin phrase cor rotto in a letter to Catherine was Princess Elizabeth who was heartbroken over the death of her mother many years earlier. I also view Princess, then Queen, Elizabeth as having a charmed life. However, the author tells us that both of these characters were heartbroken. We all can agree that Elizabeth's early life was difficult but Catherine had heartbreak too as she lost two of her children and was frequently separated from her husband and children. 

Religion plays a big role in the novel as it covers all of Henry VIII's wives, son Edward, and sisters Mary and Elizabeth. Our heroine Catherine, however, does not care how others practice their religion. She accepts whatever faith tradition a person wishes to follow and because of that she never spread gossip either against the Catholic Church or against the reformers. Consequently, everyone liked her. Her conduct was always exemplary. By the way, she was a reformer. 

The Tudor setting was exotic. The ladies wore sumptuous dresses and the men of the court wore velvet. In this book the reader gets the full perspective on what it was like to wear these dresses. While beautiful to look at, getting dressed was cumbersome because of all the layers and for Catherine, who was pregnant sixteen times, too heavy to wear. It wasn't all exotic for the ladies who lived during this era as they were required to spend the last three months of pregnancy confined to their rooms and another two months of confinement after the birth until they were churched, that is, allowed to go to church for a purification rite and to thank God for their newborn child.  

The writing itself was fast paced as many chapters covered several years and the chapters were short. There is a ton of detail in the novel so it was definitely well researched. Given that the author has, to date, only written about Boleyn family members, she must be an expert on the family. The story begins when Catherine is 15 and ends with her death at age 47. It seemed to me that Catherine lived to be much older because we read about the minutiae in her life as well as the big events. However, per Wikipedia, Catherine died at age 47. She led an incredible life.

5 out of 5 stars.

The Godmother's Secret

The Godmother's Secret is about Elysabeth Scropes who births Elizabeth Woodville's first son and English heir Prince Edward. I have been captivated by Elizabeth Woodville's story since watching the The White Queen TV series and the subsequent The White Princess series about her daughter. This book is another fantastic retelling of a part of Woodville's life but focuses more on her two sons, heir Ned and Dickon, the princes in the tower.

The publisher's summary:

May 1483: The Tower of London. When King Edward IV dies and Lady Elysabeth Scrope delivers her young godson, Edward V, into the Tower of London to prepare for his coronation, she is engulfed in political turmoil. Within months, the prince and his brother have disappeared, Richard III is declared king, and Elysabeth’s sister Margaret Beaufort conspires with her son Henry Tudor to invade England and claim the throne.

Desperate to protect her godson, Elysabeth battles the intrigue, betrayal and power of the last medieval court, defying her Yorkist husband and her Lancastrian sister under her godmother’s sacred oath to keep Prince Edward safe. Bound by blood and rent by honour, Elysabeth is torn between the crown and her family, knowing that if her loyalty is questioned, she is in peril of losing everything—including her life.

Were the princes murdered by their uncle, Richard III? Did Margaret Beaufort mastermind their disappearance to usher in the Tudor dynasty? Or did the young boys vanish for their own safety? Of anyone at the royal court, Elysabeth has the most to lose–and the most to gain–by keeping secret the fate of the Princes in the Tower. 

I relished reading this story. I knew that I would love it so I read slowly to savor each paragraph. There was alot of plot movement in each paragraph which made the book a fast read. The Afterward explains how the author decided to write about these characters. Our Elysabeth Scope is one of the author's ancestors.  Elysabeth's maiden name was St. John and our author performed extensive research not only genealogical but also historical about her ancestors. She gives the reader an alternative interpretation as to what happened to those two princes. No one really knows what happened to them so the ideas presented in the novel are plausible.

Because of her family connection to the characters, Elizabeth St. John presented them in a personal way. Family drama is exposed up front and close, especially with Elysabeth Scope's half-sister Margaret Beaufort. If you know Margaret's history, you know that she lived every day maneuvering around the changing politics of her day so that she and her son, Henry Tudor, come out on top. I see this novel not as historical fiction, which it is, but more so with family drama as the genre. I don't know if family drama can be a genre but the novel shows us one big dysfunctional family where every family member has their own desires and will manipulate every other family member for supremacy. 

So what is the godmother's secret?  Read the book and find out.  5 out of 5 stars.

The Papal Assassin

The Papal Assassin is the first book in S. J. Martin's Papal Assassin Series. She previously published five book in her Breton Horse Warrior Series. The second book in the new series, The Papal Assassin's Wife, was published last month on December 5, 2022. I am looking forward to reading it because the Papal Assassin was wonderful.

The publisher's summary:

It is 1088, King William the Conqueror is dead, and his two eldest sons are about to go to war for the throne of England. It is a turbulent time in Europe, and Chatillon, at the heart of it all, must decide which of William's sons the Pope should support. Should it be the eldest, Robert Curthose, Duke of Normandy or William Rufus, who has already crowned himself King of England?

Piers De Chatillon, the tall, handsome master swordsman, powerful Papal envoy and assassin, has finally married the beautiful young Isabella Embriaco. He intends to turn her into a top political courtesan, assassin and spy. She will be trained to bring him valuable information by moving through the noble beds of Europe and removing those men who cause him problems. His dangerous lifestyle will repeatedly put her life at risk as she becomes a pawn in a deadly game.

Chatillon, involved in the imminent war between the two brothers, disregards the warnings of his friends to take care. They know a brutal Saracen pirate is out for revenge and will try to kill Chatillon and his new wife. Chatillon sends Isabella to Ghent on her first mission to kill an old enemy of his, not realising she is now carrying his child. Meanwhile, the Saracen assassins follow close behind her, and Chatillon is over a hundred leagues away in Normandy, too far away to save her.

This was a great read. From the first pages to the ending I was unable to put the book down. The Eleventh Century is a favorite period of mine so it made this fast paced historical mystery extra special. I heard that some of the characters from the Breton Horse Warriors Series are included in this new series. I will have to read at least one of those novels to see if I would like the series.

Piers is the consummate politician. Having worked in government for most of my life, I appreciate seeing someone with the skillset to get things done. He has a dark side but so do our current crop of leaders and if I'm honest, every great leader in history has had this too. Yes, I studied political science. I was amazed at Piers' successes and was rooting for him all along. He is a fascinating character and with the comeuppance he received from an enemy toward the end, I can see him having a soft side in future novels.

This is a lovely start to a new series. I am excited about it's future. 

Zemindar

Zemindar was published in 1981. I selected it because I needed a book title beginning with Z for the Alphabet Soup Reading Challenge. It is an epic story (1,031 pages) of a family that moves from England to India just before the Indian Mutiny. The book won the Georgette Hayer Historical Novel Prize that same year. The main character is Englishwoman Laura Hewitt. Laura accompanies her cousin Emily and Emily's husband Charles to Calcutta which is a wedding trip, not honeymoon, where Laura is a paid lady's companion for her cousin. She is also in love with Charles. After several months the group meets Charles' half-brother Oliver Erskine who is the zemindar, or hereditary ruler, of a vast estate called Hassanganj. Charles had never met Oliver before but receives an invitation to visit Hassanganj. While they are there, Emily gives birth and the Sepoy rebellion and siege of Lucknow occurs, known in history as the Mutiny, the Sepoy Rebellion and The First War for Independence. Zemindar has been republished several times in the past forty years. Each time the font gets bigger and the book has grown from its original 799 pages to the current 1031 pages. I am glad for the font size and cannot imagine how hard it would be been to read this after its initial publication. 

I finished the book in just 3 days. The story moved along quickly but there was a lull in the action when the characters were escaping from Hassanganj, which was about 200 pages long. Other than that, Zemindar was a captivating read. The characters were well developed and all of them were kindhearted to each other. They had opposite personalities which gave the novel some flavor. Laura is the main character and her point of view dominates. She is the character who grew the most during her nine months in India. Laura had an independent mind before the trip. Her cousin Emily and husband Charles were stuck in the rigid mindset of the British upper classes and could not adjust to India's culture. Oliver was the villain of the story but he wasn't really a villain. His reputation was rough, having had many sexual affairs with both British and Indian women. Even though he was born into a wealthy British family, he was raised in India and spent his entire life there. He understood the importance of independence to the Indians as well as their customs. Oliver was respected by them for accommodating their religious traditions but also by living their lifestyle. The reader learns about their side of the story on independence from Oliver's dialogue. The reader also learns about the history of the Mutiny, although it is from the point of view of the British. Still, there are aspects of what happened that are true to history. 

The descriptions of India were on point. It is an exotic destination for me and I never tire reading about it. In every book set in India that I have read, the British characters are incredibly bored. None of them have much to do and partying becomes a must. Zemindar shows this the best, perhaps because of the page count. The oppressive heat in India is best described here also. The author has the characters removing their excessive clothing at certain times of the day, napping during the warmest part of the day and sipping water at the right times in order to stay healthy. 

I loved Zemindar and am rating it 4 out of 5 stars. It lost one star for the dull escape they made from Hassanganj.

The Avignon Affair

The Avignon Affair is the newest installment of the Vatican Secret Archives thriller series by Gary McAvoy and Ronald Moore. It takes place in Rome and Paris in the present day. There is also an alternating plot that takes place in France in the 1300s that concerns the death of a cardinal who is masquerading as a bishop while carrying a secret document. 

The publisher's summary:

Father Michael Dominic is called to France for an unusual assignment. A fourteenth-century bishop was found in a crypt buried under the burnt remnants of Notre-Dame-but he's wearing the ring of a cardinal, and two parchment scrolls had been hidden in his garment sleeve. Who was this 700-year-old custodian of carefully guarded secrets?

Once Father Dominic decodes the rolled scrolls, long-hidden confessions are exposed that throw France into political turmoil while creating havoc within Dominic's own team of friends. Relationships are tested and shocking new revelations emerge in The Avignon Affair.

I could not put this book down. The mystery to be solved begins with the Prologue so that the rest of the story is about what happened, how and why. The team of Father Dominic, Hana Sinclair and Marco Picard return in this installment of the series to solve another mystery from medieval times. Medieval mysteries are my favorite sub-genre so this series is a perfect fit for me. The team includes Father Michael Dominic who is the head of the Vatican Secret Archives, Hana Sinclair who is a reporter for the French newspaper Le Monde and Marco Picard, a bodyguard hired by Sinclair's grandfather to protect her. After reading 3 books in the series, they have become old friends to me.

While I was riveted by the story, the plot turned into a fantastical ending that was not believable. It was definitely interesting but just not plausible. I hate to be a spoiler here so I won't go into any details. The history part of the series delves into the Papacy of the late 1300s and the French monarchy which I thoroughly enjoyed. The authors mixed the older history with the new as the rebuilding of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris is also part of the story. This mix is what makes this series tick. 

I hate to give a McAvoy book a lower rating that 5 out of 5 stars but The Avignon Affair had flaws. I am rating it 4 because the suspense level was significant.

The Missing Girls of Alardyce House

The Missing Girls of Alardyce House is Heather Atkinson's first book in her Alardyce Trilogy. It takes place in Edinburgh during the Victorian Era and was published in June 2022. The second book in the trilogy was published in October 2022 and the third book will be published later in 2023. This is the first book of Atkinson's that I have read. I recognized her name when I selected the book but was not aware that she has published 50 novels. Wow! Why am I just getting around to reading her works?

The publisher's summary:

Edinburgh 1880. When Amy Osbourne’s parents are lost at sea, she is forced to leave her London home and is sent to live with her aunt and uncle at the opposite end of the country.

Alardyce House is depressing and dreary, her aunt haughty and cruel. Amy strikes up a friendship with her cousin Edward but his older brother Henry is just as conceited as his mother, and a mutual loathing develops between him and Amy. 

As her weeks of mourning pass, the realisation begins to dawn on Amy that her aunt has designs on her inheritance and the candidate she favours to be her niece’s husband fills Amy with horror. Struggling in this strange, unwelcoming environment, Amy begins to suspect that something isn’t right at Alardyce House. 

There are rumours below stairs of a monster on the loose, local women are being brutally attacked and her cousin Henry is the prime suspect. Alardyce House is full of dark secrets and Amy isn’t sure who she can trust…

The story is pretty fast paced for historical fiction. Amy's story dominates the book and the reader does not hear about any girls going missing from the house until the end so the title is misleading. The publisher's summary was also somewhat misleading. There is alot of sex, including rape, in the story but there are no graphic descriptions. We only read that it happens. If this would bother you, be on notice that you probably don't want to read the book. There is also physical and emotional abuse among the characters. Part of the mystery is figuring out who is abusing whom.

I thought the book was entertaining. The brutality that Amy experienced was something that women of the era were unfortunately subjected to so it seemed normal to me. 4 out of 5 stars.

Keeper of the Queen's Jewels

Adrienne Dillard has published four books to date, three of them historical fiction accounts of Jane Seymour, Catherine Carey (Anne Boleyn's niece) and Jane Boleyn.  Keeper of the Queen's Jewels is her most recent novel, which was published in 2022 and it is about Jane Seymour.

The publisher's summary:

Two women with opposing allegiances are bound together by desperate circumstances: one must birth a son to secure the throne. The other hides a dangerous secret that could cost them their lives. No longer the meek and mild, the ineffectual queen of the history books, Jane Seymour is reimagined as a woman on the precipice - one misplaced step away from oblivion. 

In the maid's dormitory, Margery Horsman struggles as she comes to terms with the fallout of her careless words, uttered recklessly in a fit of envy and greed, ending in the ruin and death of her first love. Surrounded, yet feeling alone and abandoned, Margery searches for her place in the world. When a young widower still grieving over the loss of his wife asks for her hand, Margery steps into a role she never imagined, that of mother to a half-orphaned boy.

As religious rebellion threatens to tear the country in two, fortune's wheel turns, and formerly rising stars of the Tudor court tumble. Amid the upheaval, a queen and her devoted maid will unite to preserve the legacy of Anne Boleyn for England's once and future queen:  Gloriana. 

Each chapter alternates between the points of view of Jane Seymour and Margery Horsman. Margery was one of the ladies in waiting for Anne Boleyn who stayed on at Henry VIII's behest after Anne's beheading. For some reason he kept on all of Anne's attendants. I can only presume that there were political reasons for this but the book doesn't go into it. At first Margery handled the wardrobe but later became in charge of the jewelry. She was adept at picking out the right jewels for the right gown. 

The characters were taken from real life. I was not familiar with them in depth, particularly Jane Seymour, and I learned alot about her political ability. Yes, she did have some ability. I was not aware that she was terrified of ending up like her predecessor but I probably should have known that she would be afraid. Any woman would mistrust Henry VIII considering how he disposed of two prior wives. The Tudor setting is always going to be exciting for me. I love reading about the dresses that the ladies wore, and the jewels of course, as well as descriptions of the food offered at feasts. 

Keeper has a nice take on often told stories of the wives of Henry VIII. With the perspective of someone with real power, the power of holding the jewels, the reader learns everything that that entails.

5 out of 5 stars.

2023 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge

The Historical Fiction Reading Challenge is my favorite challenge so I am signing up to participate again next year. Like this year, I am participating at the Ancient History level which requires that 25 books be read. I probably read more historical mysteries than fiction as some historical fiction books are rather dry. However, I am ready to read both subgenres.

The Rules:

1)    Write a review of the book you read. If you don't have a blog you can post a link to your review if it's posted on Goodreads, Facebook, or Amazon, or you can add your book title and thoughts in the comment section of the challenge post.

2)    Any sub-genre of historical fiction is accepted (Historical Romance, Historical Mystery, Historical Fantasy, Young Adult, History/Non-Fiction, etc.)

3)    You can choose to participate at

one of the different reading levels:

20th Century Reader - 2 books
Victorian Reader - 5 books
Renaissance Reader - 10 books
Medieval - 15 books
Ancient History - 25 books
Prehistoric - 50+ books

4)    To join the challenge you only need to make a post about it, add your link at the challenge host post at The Intrepid Reader. 

5)    Use the challenge hashtag #histficreadingchallenge, join in on the Facebook page, and grab the challenge badge from The Intrepid Reader.

Happy reading!