Before picking up this book I had previously heard of Marie Antoinette, but I hadn’t heard of her sister Marie Carolina (Charlotte), two Queens who had a huge impact on the 1700’s & early 1800’s. I love a good historical novel & found myself cross-referencing records to see the correlation between the fictional & the fact. The Embroidered Book crosses over beautifully between historical fiction & magical fantasy. The only downside to this book for me was the author taking well over 600 pages to tell the story. A thick book has never really deterred me before, but this one took longer than usual & I honestly feel it could have been substantially shorter & gotten to the conclusion much sooner. Around the 300 page mark, I was beginning to lose interest & really had to push myself to continue on, knowing I still had 300 pages to go. I really feel that it took away from the overall content of the book.
While I definitely had issues with the length of the story, I still quite enjoyed it & really loved wrapping my mouth around all the beautiful words in this novel, the names & places of other ethnicities only added to my fascination with this story.