Beatrice d’Este Duchess of Bari was married to one of the
most powerful men in Italy during the Italian Renaissance. Lodovico Sforza,
Duke of Bari, Regent for the Duke of Milan ruled Milan for his incapable nephew
Gian Galeazzo Sforza. Gian prior to Beatrice’s marriage had married her cousin
Isabella of Aragon. The cousins had shared a grandfather, Ferrante I, King of
Naples and were not strangers to the brutal rivalries between Italy’s powerful
leading families.
The cousins had been reunited upon Beatrice’s marriage and
it was clear from the beginning there was no cousinly love between them at all.
An intense rivalry was instantly born, hate at first sight, as I like to call
it. The cousins knew they could each be each others undoing yet at times they
found they did love each other but really could not stop the rivalry that had escaladed
as the years progressed. On the cusp of the Italian Wars the cousins find each
other at odds over titles and the rights to rule Milan. Beatrice had everything
to loose and Isabella had already lost everything. Faced with an uprising and
the French practically at the city gates the cousins discover their fates are
forever intertwined with the survival of Milan.
4/5 I enjoyed this novel but it was a bit on the dramatic
side. I enjoyed the liberties the author took and found it a bit on the smutty
side at times. This is not a novel I would recommend to my more reserved
readers. Yet if you’re anything like me you enjoy a little bit of smut in your
history then this is the novel for you!
X~ Rating for graphic sexual encounters.
FTC~ this novel is from my personal collection.
~Lizzie~
Great review! It sounds interesting. Is the book out of print?
ReplyDeleteThanks Lauralee this one is defiantly out of print. The publication date on my copy was June 1st 1992. But I think they released a paperback version too sometime after that but still in the 90's.
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