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Title: The Secret Life of Josephine

Subtitle: Napoleon's Bird of Paradise

Author: Carolly Erickson

Narrator: Margot Dionne

Format: Unabridged

Length: 12 hrs and 50 mins

Language: English

Release date: 08-14-15

Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Ratings: 3 of 5 out of 1 votes

Genres: Fiction, Historical

Publisher's Summary:

The best-selling author of The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette and The Last Wife of Henry VIII returns with an enchanting novel about one of the most seductive women in history: Josephine Bonaparte, first wife of Napoleon.

Born on the Caribbean island of Martinique, Josephine had an exotic Creole appeal that would ultimately propel her to reign over an empire as wife of the most powerful man in the world. But her life is a story of ambition and danger, of luck and a ferocious will to survive. Married young to an arrogant French aristocrat who died during the Terror, Josephine also narrowly missed losing her head to the guillotine. But her extraordinary charm, sensuality, and natural cunning helped her become mistress to some of the most powerful politicians in post-Revolutionary France.

Soon she had married the much younger General Bonaparte, whose armies garnered France an empire that ran from Europe to Africa and the New World and who crowned himself and his wife emperor and empress of France. He dominated on the battlefield, and she presided over the worlds of fashion and glamour. But Josephine's heart belonged to another man - the mysterious, compelling stranger who had won her as a girl in Martinique.

Members Reviews:

We'll make it 1.5 stars just to be fair (1.5 for Effort?)....

In her "A Note to the Reader" the author does mention that she isn't going for historical accuracy here. In the same note she makes references (Hippolyte Charles, etc.) to show she has done some research, and goes on to explain that the intent of this book is "historical entertainment" and not to create a "historical novel"

Having said that (user sighs) I appreciate the idea, but really disliked the implementation... it just didn't "do" it for me. Like many readers, I had to force myself to finish it. (And I only managed *that* by constantly repeating, "Any resemblance between the fictional characters depicted herein and any real persons living or deceased who bear the same names is totally accidental.")

Josephine, as mentioned in previous reviews, is an uninteresting, unsympathetic character. What *anyone* sees in her is hard to tell. (Oh, wait, she does mention having large breasts; that must be it ;-) After a couple of chapters I hit the point of not caring what happened to her... not a good start. Napoleon (believe it or not) fares even worse. He hates her early on, and loathes her by the end (and since the story is told from her point of view, one starts to wonder what she did -and didn't bother reporting to her reader- that made him feel that way). *He* is basically smelly, neurotic, sadistic, cruel, homicidal, and easily lead by the woman he can't stand the sight of. She's boring beyond words. The Perfect Couple.

(I suppose that someone who loves romance novels, and either isn't too familiar with the era and its famous characters or isn't bothered by Extreme Deviations might enjoy this book. And I use "might" loosely.)

If you absolutely have to read this, go to your local library. I'm donating my copy to mine, so at the very least it won't occupy shelf space at home.

(And where'd she come up with the "Bird of Paradise" tag...