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Vojvotkinja (2011)

by Elizabeth Loupas(Favorite Author)

3.89 of 5 Votes: 5

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Mono i manjana

review 1: This was actually better than 3 stars, but not quite four. Elizabeth Loupas, inspired by the Robert Browning poem "My Last Duchess", considers what it must have been like to be the second wife of the Duke of Ferrara. The story takes place over a few months following the marriage of Barbara, an archduchess of Austria, and Alfonso, the powerful Duke of Ferrara. Barbara knows that she is not beautiful like the first duchess, the young Lucrezia d'Medici. She both fears and is fascinated by the whispers about Lucrezia and her mysterious death. Amid court intrigue and attempts on her life, Barbara searches for answers in the past. When the Duke finds out what she is doing, he reluctantly helps her follow the path to the truth.Ms. Loupas has created a sympathetic lead in B... morearbara. She is intelligent and inquisitive. The Duke is a less successful character--he is powerful, proud, and controlling, but he remains too remote and closed off for the reader to feel any understanding of his interior life. I found the presentation of Lucrezia d'Medici's story, written as the voice of a ghostly presence, annoying. It is as though a creature like the ghost of Hamlet's father keeps butting into the story. Tons of backstory is dumped in these sections at the end of every chapter. And the character of Fra Pandolf, the artist who painted portraits of both wives, is just ludicrously unbelievable. The details of life at the court of Ferrara--the grandeur, the palaces, and the clothing--provided a rich backdrop.If you enjoy stories set in the Italian renaissance, you may like this one.
review 2: So, basically…The Second Duchess isn’t particularly good. It felt like a clutzy mashup of the Bluebeard fairytale and du Maurier’s Rebecca, with a layer of Nancy Drew mystery on top. Add in a caveman-like alpha male, and we’re in big trouble. I didn’t hate this book, but I most definitely can’t say it’s an outstanding piece of historical fiction. Or any kind of fiction, really.Elizabeth Lupas’ debut is about Barbara of Austria, who was the second wife of Alfonso d’Este. His first wife died under mysterious circumstances, and when Barbara (ugly and boring compared to her predecessor) arrives in Ferrara, she finds that most of the court is comparing her to the first duchess and suchlike. Hmm…does this sound familiar to anyone? Maybe the second Mrs. de Winter had similar problems? Just maybe.Also, Barbara’s husband the Duke is a very possessive and weird guy. His one rule for Barbara is that she not talk about his first wife or seek information about her. But naturally, she does, and the we get a full-on Bluebeard impersonation from Duke Alfonso. Maybe he doesn’t kill Barbara, but he beats and imprisons her. Nice guy, that Alfonso.But then Barbara eventually figures out what happened to her husband’s first wife. She was like the first-ever girl detective! Nancy Drew does Renaissance Italy! Or something. Anyway. Yeah, that didn’t work for me. Especially because Loupas had the ghost of the first duchess as a character. And the ghost basically served as an info-dumping machine. So lame, so lazy, so cheesy. How easy would it have been if Rebecca de Winter had this chance to narrate the story? She could have told the reader exactly what happened to her, thus taking away much of the surprise. That’s basically what happened with The Second Duchess.And the Mrs. Danvers character? Wow. If that isn’t a blatant rip-off, I don’t know what is. Bad bad bad.Additionally, the whole romance thing just did not impress. I understand that in the 16th century, it was socially acceptable for a man to beat and imprison his wife if she “misbehaves”, but Loupas was writing for a 21st century audience, and there are ways to accommodate historical setting while making a romance that readers will buy into. For instance, history agrees that Barbara and Alfonso had a happy marriage, so why not just make him kind of distant and weird at first(à la Maxim de Winter), instead of an abusive creep? Because Barbara went from “omg I hate this guy, he hit me” to “aww, I love him so much” for no apparent reason. Uh…what? I just did not buy that relationship dynamic at all. He beat her unconscious because she disobeyed him, but then she just forgot all about that? (He never apologized or said he wouldn’t do it again, though he did say he thought he could “manage her behavior” in other ways—such a romantic, that guy.) And apparently he loved her all along? Um, sorry, but that thing where the guy treats the girl like dirt because he’s too manly or proud to let his feelings show is awful. It happens a lot in YA, but shame on Ms. Loupas for doing that here. Shame!Anyway. The entirety of The Second Duchess felt like a very sensationalized, dramatized adaptation of real history. I recommend this to readers who enjoy Michelle Moran or Kate Quinn or “poolside historical fiction”. Light, heavy on drama and suchlike, and often lacking in accuracy. I didn’t hate the book, but one would think that if you’re using Rebecca as an inspiration, you book wouldn’t be so bad. Unfortunately, The Second Duchess was. less

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