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Dark Aemilia: A Novel Of Shakespeare's Dark Lady (2014)

by Sally O'Reilly(Favorite Author)

3.28 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

1250048133 (ISBN13: 9781250048134)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Picador

review 1: I wanted to like this, I really did, but it's too tortured, and the main character is too unyielding in her stubbornness. The child she so wants to protect is so unlikeable that I didn't even root for that, which is really horrible. I just feel like it was just gut-wrenchingly depressing for the sake of it. I'm still red-eyed from crying out the last several chapters and I'm angry with the author for putting me through it, instead of relishing the immersion. Ugh
review 2: A well researched Shakespearean era tale that has as much tragedy, revenge, love and lust as can be found in any play by the Bard himself. Wonderful descriptive passages made the scenes come alive to the point that you could almost smell the festering bile that filled the streets. Sadly, for m... moree, this was a story that had so much potential but felt too choppy and underdeveloped in many places. Story arcs would be initiated and then abandoned for chapters at a time only to be taken up again briefly but not explained. I found myself frustrated to tears near the end (I can't say why as I don't want to mention any spoilers) as a story line simply ended with no explanation at all. I think that the author has a wonderful turn of phrase and fabulous imagination and it was in no way a terrible book but I just found the stop-start story to be too frustrating. On a side note, I didn't find the language too off putting even though the use of a word that I loathe was more frequent that I liked. less

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