Aimie my beloved: January 2019

Enchantée

by Gita Trelease

Published by Flatiron Books

Publication Date: February 5th, 2019

Genres: Young Adult, Fantasy, Historical Fiction

Format: ARC

Source: Kindly provided by Raincoast Books in exchange for an honest review.

Summary from Goodreads:

Paris in 1789 is a labyrinth of twisted streets, filled with beggars, thieves, revolutionaries—and magicians...

When smallpox kills her parents, Camille Durbonne must find a way to provide for her frail, naive sister while managing her volatile brother. Relying on petty magic—la magie ordinaire—Camille painstakingly transforms scraps of metal into money to buy the food and medicine they need. But when the coins won’t hold their shape and her brother disappears with the family’s savings, Camille must pursue a richer, more dangerous mark: the glittering court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.

With dark magic forbidden by her mother, Camille transforms herself into the ‘Baroness de la Fontaine’ and is swept up into life at the Palace of Versailles, where aristocrats both fear and hunger for la magie. There, she gambles at cards, desperate to have enough to keep herself and her sister safe. Yet the longer she stays at court, the more difficult it becomes to reconcile her resentment of the nobles with the enchantments of Versailles. And when she returns to Paris, Camille meets a handsome young balloonist—who dares her to hope that love and liberty may both be possible.

But la magie has its costs. And when Camille loses control of her secrets, the game she's playing turns deadly. Then revolution erupts, and she must choose—love or loyalty, democracy or aristocracy, freedom or magic—before Paris burns…

Buy Links:

Amazon│Barnes & Noble│Indigo│Audible│Book Depository

Review

Enchantée is a young adult novel with a wonderful blend of fantasy and historical fiction.

Enchantée, told in third person point of view, follows 17-year-old Camille Durbonne. Taking on the responsibility of taking care of her ill younger sister, Sophie, and dealing with her drunken older brother, Alain, she faces the heavy burden of stretching the little amount of money they do have to pay for their rent, food and other necessities. By using her talent, Camille turns whatever metal she can get her hands on into coins. However, she must be careful when doing so since she has to feel and use her sorrow, this can often weaken her if she overdoes it.

Enchantée had me on the edge of my seat with the constant tension thrust into almost every scene and how high the stakes were. The romance was a nice mix to the story as well. It helps that Camille and Lazare's were characters you couldn't help but root for. Honestly, this was a page turner! Trelease's writing was wonderfully written, it felt as if you were actually walking the very streets of Paris in 1789. I also enjoyed reading about the fashion, the hot air balloon, Versailles and French Revolution, as well as the relationship between the siblings.

It was easy to get lost in this story. Camille, a young woman struggling in the face of poverty to care for those she loves, uses the magic she has to enter the sparkling world of the French Court to help both herself and her family. Camille was an amazing character to read, she faced everything head on and was imperfect in the most wondrous of ways. She had to hold the weight of caring and looking after her younger sister, who dreams of marrying rich, while protecting them both from their horrid older brother, an alcoholic who gambles everything he makes. Pushed to the very edge of poverty, Camille would do anything to protect her sister from living on the streets, so she does the one thing her mother warned her was too dangerous, she opens the mysterious magic box.

The magical, and dangerous, box has the ability to allow Camille to transform her appearance to fit in with those of aristocracy. She also ends up learning and fully embracing the art of glamour, illusions that ensure that she is able to maintain her character while surround by those of aristocracy as well as change card faces so she may win to provide for herself and her sister. However, Camille learns that the consequence of her magic may be the highest price to pay.

In the end, I thoroughly enjoyed reading and exploring the world of Enchantée as well as the characters in it. I highly recommend you pick this book up and read it today.

Rating

★★★★

About the Author

Born in Sweden to Indian and Swedish parents, Gita Trelease has lived in lots of places, including New York, Paris, and a tiny town in central Italy.

She attended Yale College and New York University, where she earned a Ph.D. in British literature. Before becoming a novelist, she taught classes on writing and fairy tales—some of which have seeped into this story.

Along with her husband and son, Gita divides her time between a spooky old village in Massachusetts and the coast of Maine, where she’s still searching for a secret portal that will take her back to Versailles.

Author Links:

Website│Twitter│Instagram│Goodreads

Q & A

Q: Where did you get your ideas for Enchantée and what was your writing process like?

A: It actually came to me in a daydream! I’d been thinking about writing a story set during the French Revolution, a period that has always fascinated me, when I had a vision of a girl, in beautiful eighteenth-century clothes, sitting at a desk. She was writing a letter with a quill pen, and I somehow knew—the way you do in dreams—that the ink she was using was made from her tears. Wherever she was—to me it looked like Versailles—she did not belong there. All at once, I had a lot of questions: who was she? What was she doing there? What magic was she using, and why? As I explored those questions, the story began to take shape.

Enchantée is my first book and the writing process was…whatever I could think of to move the story forward! I have some perfectionist tendencies that make drafting a challenge, to say the least. When I began writing, I knew the ending and I also had a vague outline I’d created after reading Save the Cat. After that, I wrote the scenes I knew needed to be in the story and for the most part, I wrote them out of order—which is how my brain works, I’ve come to realize. I’ve tried to force it to be otherwise, which sometimes works, but often not. Writing non-linearly means a lot of work in revisions, but it got me writing when I doubted myself, so I count that as a win! I’m lucky to have several terrific critique partners, and they gave me wonderful feedback that I used to improve the story. I probably did seven revisions over two and a half years before querying agents in the summer of 2017. Revisions are how I make the story as rich as I’d like it to be.

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, Hosted by Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that I'm eagerly anticipating.

Title:

Meet Cute

Author:

Helena Hunting

Publication Date:

April 9th, 2019

Publisher:

Forever

Summary from Goodreads:

The New York Times bestselling author of Pucked and The Good Luck Charm delivers a Hollywood happily-ever-after where a famous heartthrob falls for his ultimate fangirl in this sexy standalone romantic comedy.

Talk about an embarrassing introduction. On her first day of law school, Kailyn ran - quite literally - into the actor she crushed on as a teenager, ending with him sprawled on top of her. Mortified to discover the Daxton Hughes was also a student in her class, her embarrassment over their meet-cute quickly turned into a friendship she never expected. Of course, she never saw his betrayal coming either...

Now, eight years later, Dax is in her office asking for legal advice. Despite her anger, Kailyn can't help feeling sorry for the devastated man who just became sole guardian to his thirteen-year-old sister. But when her boss gets wind of Kailyn's new celebrity client, there's even more at stake than Dax's custody issues: if she gets Dax to work at their firm, she'll be promoted to partner.

The more time Kailyn spends with Dax and his sister, the more she starts to feel like a family, and the more she realizes the chemistry they had all those years ago is as fresh as ever. But will they be able to forgive the mistakes of the past, or will one betrayal lead to another?

Monday, January 28, 2019

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Monday, January 21, 2019

Blog Tour | Enchantée by Gita Trelease

★★★★

Wednesday, January 9, 2019

Waiting on Wednesday {29}

2024 Reading Challenge

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