I was first introduced to Emerson by reading the first book in her series, the Pleasure Palace, but haven't read the rest of the books in the series. It does very well as a stand-alone book (coming from me, that's high praise).

The story is told in two parts, the past and the present - the premise is Audrey, who is sick, is telling her 8 year old daughter, Hester, her life story - a dangerous life story which could get them all killed. There's some holes left open in the plot (perhaps on purpose as this is a series), but basically you are led to believe that Audrey is the king's daughter because he pays a lot of attention to her, attention not given the rest of her family.

I don't particularly like books or shows where you bounce back and forth from past to present, but I didn't mind it in this book - Emerson does this very well. I did have a problem with Audrey telling her daughter all this stuff at such a young age. I understand it would have been too difficult to write her daughter a letter that someone else might discover, but honestly, why would her daughter even need to know that she might be related to the king? No one was acknowledging them, so what did it matter?

I also found it really sad that Audrey obsessed most of her early adult years over a man who really didn't love her, and then she ended up marrying him and wondered why her life didn't turn out better than it did.