Review: The Game of Hope by Sandra Gulland

For Napoleon's stepdaughter, nothing is simple -- especially love. 

Paris, 1798.  Hortense de Beauharnais is engrossed in her studies at a boarding school for aristocratic girls, most of whom suffered tragic losses during the tumultuous days of the French Revolution. She loves to play and compose music, read and paint, and daydream about Christophe, her brother's dashing fellow officer. But Hortense is not an ordinary girl. Her beautiful, charming mother Josephine has married Napoleon Bonaparte, soon to become the most powerful man in France, but viewed by Hortense as a coarse, unworthy successor to her elegant father, who was guillotined during the Terror.     

Where will Hortense's future lie?

 Inspired by Hortense's real-life autobiography with charming glimpses of teen life long ago, this is the story of a girl chosen by fate to play a role she didn't choose.

Kindle Edition, 384 pages

Published May 1st 2018

by Penguin Teen

****

This is my second novel by Sandra Gulland and her first venture into YA, fitting as Hortense is a young adult herself. 

This is the first time reading anything about Hortense and I quite enjoyed it.  To get glimpses of the final years of the Revolution, though the eyes of the young, added that extra emotional element, it wasn't hard to feel empathy for what they went through.  The scars left were not always the physical ones.  Hortense didn’t ask to be stepdaughter of the famous Bonaparte but that was her lot in life. She is only 15 years old and has already experienced so much, her character was well-developed with memories and guilt of the past, along with a future not always of her choosing.

It’s definite from past books by this author that she has done an enormous amount of research into this time, based on actual events she stayed true to history.

The Game of Hope is a book that I was sad to see end, I would like to know where the next chapter in her life takes her (a sequel would be nice).

Thank you to the publisher (via Netgalley) for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for honest review.