I received a free digital copy from the author/publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest feedback.

Chiara is a young, desperate girl when she meets the Francesco d'Medici, the soon-to-be grand duke of Tuscany. Francesco and his fellow alchemist Ruan employ/kidnap Chiara into being their helper and soon Chiara is in the middle of a lot of Italian court drama which includes adultery, secrets and murder.

I really enjoyed this. It had a great historical backdrop with just enough dramatic flair you'd expect from an Italian court. Chiara has some amazing character development. At the start of the book, she's a young fifteen-year-old girl with very little experience in the world of aristocrats and by the end of the book she's become an amazingly confident and clever woman, able to hold her own, and carry her own, secrets in a world where one step wrong could end up in her murder.

What I love about historical fiction is the magic an author can create by dropping a fictional character into the midst of a very real historical story and making it seem like they should be part of it and its history. Loupas really made Chiara and Ruan, and many other fictional elements fit right alongside the real story of Francesco and his family and it was a lot of fun to read!