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I just love a bonus post, almost as much as I love getting an invitation to read an Advance Review Copy (ARC)!  Dear readers, that is how today’s title comes to you.  We are so grateful to Mindbuck Media and Black Rose Writing for inviting us to review this novel and for providing the e-ARCs, and want to assure our readers that all opinions are our own.  

Let us begin by counting the ways Daughter of the King by Kerry Chaput ticks our readerly boxes: historical fiction, based on a part of French history that was BRAND NEW to us, centered around French politics, and those of New France, featuring a heroine who is on her coming-of-age journey, and includes some romance, with bonus points for a new author.  

Short review: Just go ahead and preorder the book now, especially if your readerly boxes are similar to ours.  

Isabelle and her mother are on their own in La Rochelle, where they are among the struggling Protestant community, trying to live and practice their faith under the thumb of the dragoons (French military), their informants, and ultimately le Roi Soleil.  Isabelle is trying to navigate being of marriageable age, and all that means in the 17th century, with caring for her ailing, fearful, alcoholic mother, and being a person amidst the perpetual religious persecution of the day.  Drama ensues, and eventually (yes, I’m skipping a lot, and I’m not sorry) Isabelle finds herself as a Filles du Roi – a daughter of the king who is compensated for going to New France to marry the settler of her choice and help populate the area.  As you’d expect, more drama ensues, and Isabelle faces a whole host of challenges, some old and familiar, and others new and unforeseen (at least by Isabelle).  

While Daughter of the King is centered around a character who is persecuted for her religion, this novel isn’t preachy or centered around those pieces, despite their, at times, prominent place in the story.  The focus is very historical and quite interesting.  The story does include romance, although I wouldn’t call it a romance novel (she’s sent to the New World to be married and make babies, so of course it’s included), and there are some bedroom scenes, but they are not very descriptive and do serve the story well.  Some of the issues of colonization, the plight of first peoples, and the ways Eurpoeans took advantage of so much on this continent (*waves from the US*) are featured and add to the story, especially as we read it the week of Thanksgiving.  

I’m giving Daughter of the King 3.5 stars, and contentedly rounding up to 4 stars.  The historical context is new, but also not, as this France-meets-new-world tale includes pieces I’m very familiar with and others that are brand new to me.  Isabelle is a fantastic heroine who makes stupid mistakes for all the right reasons and struggles to find her place in the world, both things that I’m so here for in fiction.  Chaput’s writing paints a beautiful picture of concepts that are familiar to me, but slightly off from my usual (old French architecture, but a port city instead of inland, settlers in Canada instead of the US, etc.)  And, I’m still thinking about this story weeks later, as I’m very interested to know how it’ll turn out, but satisfied enough with the ending of book #1.  I am likely to reread this novel when the next in the trilogy comes out, and I’m very excited to see what you all think about it.  If that’s not a push for a preorder that will magically show up on your kindle or doorstep, I don’t know what is!  Remember, if you’re contemplating a purchase, pre-orders are huge for authors!  

What’s a novel you read that opened your eyes to new aspects of a familiar historical period?

~Nikki 

These are my confessions…

In 2005 I went on exchange to a small, English speaking University in Quebec. Bishop’s University in Sherbrooke was the location of my ‘year abroad’ during my third year in undergrad. I wanted to work on my French (I didn’t) and study French Canadian Nationalism (I did). I took a history course on French Canadian Nationalism as well as two general Canadian History courses. I did all this historical and political study in order to write an undergraduate thesis on French Canadian Nationalism, which I ended up not completing. Sometimes life be that way, even after 5 years of undergrad. But, I don’t remember ever reading about Les Filles du Roi, so reading about them in Daughter of the King by Kerry Chaput was a thrill and a delight. Chaput is a debut author with a publishing house behind her, but she did self-publish two other novels which you can find here. She lives in Oregon with her husband, daughters, and dogs.

Bishop’s is where I met Canadian Adam and learned that snow is beautiful until you have to trudge through it everyday to classes. Layering is great until you have to take off three of them in the classroom or die of overheating. Also, breathable long underwear is the best invention on the planet for cold weather. I highly recommend you invest in a set as well as mid-calf waterproof snow boots. Best winter weather investment, and I am so glad I took that advice from my Canadian girl friends at the time. Quebecois winters are real cold, y’all. Cold and snowy, and even though Montreal and La Rochelle are on the same latitude, the difference in climate for Isabelle and the other Filles du Roi would have experienced in Quebec City would have been way more of a shock than Caput seems to describe. There’s one line that reads: “My hair crackles with ice as I push my way up to sitting.” when Isabelle is out in the winter wilderness. It makes me think of the time when I was walking from the gym with wet hair to my dorm for a shower and I had left a piece dangling outside of my toque. That piece of hair froze into an icicle and broke off when I touched it. I was very shocked and surprised and didn’t allow it to happen again. So, I suppose there are lessons one must learn by experience. This Southern girl had to learn that lesson the hard way.

And Isabelle does learn by experience in Daughter of the King. What I really loved about her coming of age story is that she learns who she is and what she really wants and does find those things in New France, but only when she feels safe within her own capabilities. Not everyone ever realizes their own strength, nor are we all able to use that strength to accomplish what we want. Sometimes we don’t know what we actually want until we realize we can’t have it anymore, just as Isabelle did at a later part of the book. And, I am oh so ready for book two! A rounded up four star read from me, too, and I hope we get advanced copies of the rest of the Defying the Crown series as they are released, because I don’t want to have to wait so long to get them!

~Ashley

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