With this second book that I've read written by Charles Belfoure, I am now convinced that he's not the writer for me. As in The Paris Architect, a self-absorbed man suddenly becomes a staunch defender of the oppressed. Belfoure, who is an architect himself, has a knack for choosing architecture and historic periods that fascinate me. In The Fabergé Secret, it's the reign of Nicholas II and Alexandra. This is a period in Russia filled with incredible beauty and indescribable brutality, and Belfoure does well in depicting the pogroms that were rife in the country at the time. But then... there's the rest of the story.
In reading The Fabergé Secret, it felt as though Belfoure fell so deeply in love with his setting that he forgot all about including any action or real movement in the plot until well past the halfway point in the book. I was left wondering if anything was ever going to happen. The author also felt comfortable in sacrificing well-known historical facts to his fictional tale.
At the end of the day, I found The Fabergé Secret to be a predictable, standard, historical romance laced with a bit of architecture. A pleasant diversion that could have been so much more.
(Review copy courtesy of the publisher and Net Galley)
In reading The Fabergé Secret, it felt as though Belfoure fell so deeply in love with his setting that he forgot all about including any action or real movement in the plot until well past the halfway point in the book. I was left wondering if anything was ever going to happen. The author also felt comfortable in sacrificing well-known historical facts to his fictional tale.
At the end of the day, I found The Fabergé Secret to be a predictable, standard, historical romance laced with a bit of architecture. A pleasant diversion that could have been so much more.
(Review copy courtesy of the publisher and Net Galley)
