I truly can’t remember the last time I read a purely historical fiction book without some kind of fantasy element but Blood & Beauty: The Borgias by Sarah Dunant really caught my attention. I didn’t know much about the infamous Borgia family going into this and I feel I know much more now after reading it but unfortunately, I wasn’t very entertained in the process. This review will have spoilers but they are historical facts.
Synopsis:
By the end of the fifteenth century, the beauty and creativity of Italy is matched by its brutality and corruption, nowhere more than in Rome and inside the Church. When Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia buys his way into the papacy as Alexander VI, he is defined not just by his wealth or his passionate love for his illegitimate children, but by his blood: He is a Spanish Pope in a city run by Italians. If the Borgias are to triumph, this charismatic, consummate politician with a huge appetite for life, women, and power must use papacy and family—in particular, his eldest son, Cesare, and his daughter Lucrezia—in order to succeed.
Cesare, with a dazzlingly cold intelligence and an even colder soul, is his greatest—though increasingly unstable—weapon. Later immortalized in Machiavelli’s The Prince, he provides the energy and the muscle. Lucrezia, beloved by both men, is the prime dynastic tool. Twelve years old when the novel opens, hers is a journey through three marriages, and from childish innocence to painful experience, from pawn to political player.
My Thoughts:
- Rating-
I’ll be generous and give this book three stars but it was more of a two and a half star read. The overall story was interesting because I find history to be interesting. It was obvious that Dunant heavily researched the Borgias and I believe this book is as historically accurate as possible… but that’s also my problem with it.
It reads like a history textbook. There’s very little emotion or drama. It’s written in third person and that kept me from really bonding with or caring about the characters. I would have much preferred for the story to be told from Lucrezia’s point of view and for there to have been more details about the characters themselves, rather than the political happenings of the time.
There were only two instances where I felt emotional while reading and that was when Lucrezia’s second husband was murdered and when she had to leave her young son behind to marry her third husband. Other than that, I could have had similar feelings reading a nonfiction book about the Borgias.
Final Thoughts:
If you love history and/or the Borgia family, then this book would be worth reading. If you’re like me, though, and want your historical fiction to have a heavy dose of well, fiction, then you probably won’t enjoy this one. Let me know what books in the genre I should read next! Thanks for reading and have a great day!
The Book and Beauty Blog 