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A review by katylang
Blood & Beauty: The Borgias by Sarah Dunant
4.0
Overall I found this book to be a page-turner with brilliantly developed characters. Lucrezia and Alexander in particular jumped off of the page. And the Borgia history is so fascinating that it would be almost impossible to write a book about them that wasn't engaging.
A few small exceptions. At times the endless parade of Italian names and who's on the side of who was hard to follow, and it turned out that even though I stopped being able to keep track of them all, the story still made plenty of sense. And I was a little thrown off by the beginning and the ending - the beginning because we never hear directly of Giovanni de' Medici again, and the end because it seemed abrupt. Dunant has an endnote about another Borgia book in the works, but it just feels jarring and a lot of the tension in Blood & Beauty is unresolved.
A few small exceptions. At times the endless parade of Italian names and who's on the side of who was hard to follow, and it turned out that even though I stopped being able to keep track of them all, the story still made plenty of sense. And I was a little thrown off by the beginning and the ending - the beginning because we never hear directly of Giovanni de' Medici again, and the end because it seemed abrupt. Dunant has an endnote about another Borgia book in the works, but it just feels jarring and a lot of the tension in Blood & Beauty is unresolved.