He regarded me seriously. “Not bad. What’s your name?”
“You know my name.”
“Your full name.”
“Marie-Josephe-Rose.”
“Joseph is your father’s name?”
“Was.”
“Was he a good man?”
I smiled. Hardly. “A very good man.”
“Very well, I shall call you Josephine, after the heroine in Le Sourd. Have you seen it?”
“My name is Rose.”
“You are mistaken."

3.75 stars. Napoleone, as noted by history, was kind of a dick.

If you are looking for a grand tale of passion between Napoleon Bonaparte and Rose (Joséphine de Beauharnais), you should try elsewhere. This novel, the first in a trilogy, starts with Rose as a young teenager in Martinique but her life truly begins when she marries Alexandre de Beauharnais, an aristocrat-cum-politician, at the age of 17.

In epistolary format, she chronicles her terror and worry as she desperately tries to keep her family safe and together during the French Revolution, bargaining with all the political capital she has, even as she is imprisoned in Carmes. Napoleone doesn't become a feature until the very end, after

Alexandre is sent to the guillotine and she has two (relatively) unsuccessful amourettes with powerful men.

The quote above really exemplifies the relationship between Rose and Napoleone; he is driven and odd and socially flat, while she tries to figure him out. They're friends of a sort by the end of the novel, married at the behest of Rose's former lover and Napoleone's mentor. Rose is intrigued by Napoleone's intensity, but there's no real love there. As an "aging" (32) widow with two children and less money than expenses, her decision is much more practical than romance. Napoleone claims to desperately love her, but was also offered an army to drive the Austrians out of Italy in exchange for this marriage, so who's to say?