Thank you, Partner @bibliolifestyle @williammorrowbooks for the gifted copy of Marvelous by Molly Greely! This book is kind of a sleeper - it just published February 28th and I haven’t enough of this gorgeous cover on the ‘gram, which I’d love to rectify.
It’s been a very long time since I read Renaissance or Age of Enlightenment era novels about royal court intrigue. Back during the height of The Other Boleyn Girl, I was inhaling every single Philippa Gregory, and similar novelists, I could get my hands on. Reading Marvelous felt like a fun revisit to this genre, and I also learned some fascinating stuff about the court of Catherine de Medici.
I love a book has me Googling, and doing a deep dive on what is considered the origin story of Beauty and the Beast was not at ALL what I expected. This fictional account of Petrus Gonsalvus is captivating, heartbreaking, compassionate and morally thought provoking. It’s a story about survival, being human, love and family.

“Her majesty is a woman—just a woman.  A woman whose desire for little hairy children saved Catherine from the nunnery-or worse.  Whose desire led Catherine to Petrus, to Madeleine.”

It’s a bit of a slow burn, and I would advise not going into it expecting a Disney-esque love story. But I found it completely engrossing!