Winners!

Sorry for the delay in announcing the winners for these two giveaways! I haven't been blogging or reading at all in the last week or so!

Without further ado.....

Congratulations to



Courtney from Stiletto Storytime!


who has won a copy of Before Versailles by Karleen Koen

and also to

Margaret from A Sampler of Stitches

who has won a Helen Hollick book from her Sea Witch series


An email will be on it's way to the winners shortly!

Before Versailles by Karleen Koen (includes giveaway)

Louis XIV is one of the best-known monarchs ever to grace the French throne. But what was he like as a young man—the man before Versailles?


After the death of his prime minister, Cardinal Mazarin, twenty-two-year-old Louis steps into governing France. He’s still a young man, but one who, as king, willfully takes everything he can get—including his brother’s wife. As the love affair between Louis and Princess Henriette burns, it sets the kingdom on the road toward unmistakable scandal and conflict with the Vatican. Every woman wants him. He must face what he is willing to sacrifice for love.


But there are other problems lurking outside the chateau of Fontainebleau: a boy in an iron mask has been seen in the woods, and the king’s finance minister, Nicolas Fouquet, has proven to be more powerful than Louis ever thought—a man who could make a great ally or become a dangerous foe . . .


Meticulously researched and vividly brought to life by the gorgeous prose of Karleen Koen, Before Versailles dares to explore the forces that shaped an iconic king and determined the fate of an empire.

What a web deceit made, its strands strangling the innocent and the guilty alike. (page244)

If you were to look at a list of the names of the kings of France, you would be hard pressed to go past the name of Louis XIV in terms of the importance of the legacy that he left behind. The Sun King - the man behind the magnificence that is Versailles. A man who started out as a very young king, but who grew into a formidable force to be reckoned with politically both within his own country and outside of it's borders. A man with a string of mistresses to his name.

In this book, Karleen Koen has chosen a very narrow frame of reference, focusing on a period of only six  months during the year 1661. The man who had been the power behind the throne for many years, Cardinal Mazarin, had recently died leaving Louis to decide which of his courtiers, if any, he could really trust to help rule the country. During this short period, Koen portrays a boy king who finds his identity and grows into the strong, powerful, decisive and iconic king that his country needed.

Louis' wife, the Spanish princess Marie Therese, is with child, and whilst Louis is determined that every precaution should be taken with their lives, he is not a man who is in love with his wife. He is, however, ardently besotted with the wife of his brother Philippe, known to the court as Monsieur. Most accounts I have read about the relationship between Monsieur and his wife Madame (Henriette, sister to Charles II of England) was that the marriage was a very unhappy one, but this book opens before all the turmoil starts and so he too is besotted with his wife. Once Louis starts paying court to Madame, Philippe is understandably put out (not that he doesn't have more than enough of his own secrets to keep hidden).  Scandal swirls around the couple as all the major players try to find out what the status of the relationship between Louis and Henrietta is.

The other major character is Louise de la Baume le Blanc (later known as Louise de la Valliere). She comes to court as an impoverished noble and finds a place as one of Madame's ladies. She somehow remains unsullied by the court life, a breath of fresh air that catches Louis' attention through the unwitting machinations of Madame.

Also cleverly woven into the narrative is a retelling of the story of the boy in the iron mask, which is familiar through legend, through Alexander Dumas' novel and more recently through film.

I often find myself thinking that I would not like to have lived at a royal court - so much dissembling, gossip, rumour, bribery and deceit swirling around the main players. As I read I found myself thinking a few times that I would have been completely out of my depth amongst all that intrigue, and yet, there was so much glamour, pageantry and beauty it must have been a heady place to be. And let's not forget the musketeers!

Sometimes when you read historical fiction it can feel a bit like you are putting together the pieces of a puzzle. For example, this is not the first book I have read which features Louise de la Valliere as the main character. Among others where she has been mentioned Mistress of the Sun by Sandra Gulland comes to mind. Whilst some of the characterisation was similar, other elements were different from those I remember reading previously. Will we ever know what she was really like? Probably not, but it is fun to see the various different takes on the same historical figure and put it all together.

I had been meaning to read one of Karleen Koen's books for a long time. I am not sure quite what I was waiting for. I do know that I won't be waiting too long at all before I read the next one. Her storytelling is strong, packing drama and depth in amongst the known historical facts to bring history alive!

Rating 4/5

Thanks to TLC Book Tours for the copy of this book.

Giveaway details:

We have one copy of this book to give away

- open to US/Canadian residents
- leave a comment and don't forget your email address or Twitter ID so that we can contact the lucky winner
- the contest closes on 28 June at Midnight GMT

Review cross posted at Adventures of an Intrepid Reader

Dark Angels by Karleen Koen

Alice Verney is a young woman intent on achieving her dreams. Having left Restoration England in the midst of a messy scandal, she has been living in Louis XIV's Baroque, mannered France for two years. Now she is returning home to England and anxious to re-establish herself quickly. First, she will regain her former position as a maid of honor to Charles II's queen. Then she will marry the most celebrated duke of the Restoration, putting herself in a position to attain power she's only dreamed of. As a duchess, Alice will be able to make or break her friends and enemies at will.

But all is not as it seems in the rowdy, merry court of Charles II. Since the Restoration, old political alliances have frayed, and there are whispers that the king is moving to divorce his barren queen, who some wouldn't mind seeing dead. But Alice, loyal only to a select few, is devoted to the queen, and so sets out to discover who might be making sinister plans, and if her own father is one of them. When a member of the royal family dies unexpectedly, and poison is suspected, the stakes are raised. Alice steps up her efforts to find out who is and isn't true to the queen, learns of shocking betrayals throughout court, and meets a man that she may be falling in love with—and who will spoil all of her plans. With the suspected arrival of a known poison-maker, the atmosphere in the court electrifies, and suddenly the safety of the king himself seems uncertain. Secret plots are at play, and war is on the horizon—but will it be with the Dutch or the French? And has King Charles himself betrayed his country for greed?

This was my first read by Karleen Koen. A book set in Charles II's court sound interesting and full of intrigue and I decided to pick. I also have a biography of his Queen in my TBR pile and thought this could be an interesting first introduction to the period.

The main character is a young lady, Alice de Verney, a former lady-in-waiting to Queen Catherine who followed Princess Henrietta to France on her wedding to Monsieur, the brother of the French King Louis XIV. The beginning of this novel sees them returning to England for a brief visit as Princess Henrietta serves as go-between for both Kings.

Alice is a consummate courtier. Used to court life all her life she is very sure of herself and of what she wants and is not above manipulating others to get it. In the first chapters we find out that her travel to France is due to having been betrayed by her fiancé and best friend, when an unplanned pregnancy forces them to wed she deals with her feelings by running away and trying to avoid them now that she is back. When she can't avoid them she strikes back at them and refuses forgiveness.

Some people might have problems with Alice but I felt that for a while there was genuine pain behind her actions which helped me accepting them. It's when it comes to her scheming for revenge, she plans to marry her ex fiancé's uncle and so become higher than him in social ranking. Still, for someone who has lived with intrigue and scheming all her life this may just be ordinary behaviour. I also liked her faithfulness towards Queen Catherine. The Queen is in the King's good graces only when she accepts his infidelities and it seems she has few friends when she loses it.

I had more trouble accepting her behaviour towards her friend Barbara and one of the reasons was that I felt Barbara was left with friends that were less good than Alice. Despite all her stubbornness, her pride and her manipulations Alice actually seemed the best one of the lot. Through her eyes we see the King Charles II, his court, his advisors and how everyone is only interested in advancing themselves at the expense of others. I couldn't have been easy living surrounded by lies and deceit every day.

When Princess Henrietta's party returns to France and her arrival is soon followed by her death, Alice suspects poison was at work. She and the other English attendants are soon returned to England and after a while one of Princess Henrietta's Ladies - Louise Renée de Kerouaille - follows them. Without realising it Alice is also manipulated by others. Eventually she comes to that conclusion but what truly upsets her and drives her to her breaking point is the fate of her friend Barbara.

There is a thread of romance that follows Alice throughout part of the book and I thought that was not well woven in the rest of the story. The conclusion to that comes very abruptly after the man had been in love with someone else for most of the action and I did feel it was particularly believable. In fact, my biggest complaint of the book is precisely its ending. I felt there should be a conclusion, a moral if you like and that this ending comes too soon and cuts short the story and the sense of closure that I needed.

There are a lot more characters walking in the pages of this novel and I really enjoyed how Koen mixed real historical characters with fictional ones. I have since found out that this is a prequel to her first novel - Through a Glass Darkly - and I think that I'll have to go and find that one to add to my list. The urge to revisit an older Alice is big.

Grade: 4/5