Confessions of Marie Antoinette by Juliet Grey

The last days of a Queen her people never knew...

3.5 out of 5 stars - Thoroughly sympathetic first person historical fiction account depicts French Queen Marie Antoinette in her final years as consort to King Louis XVI in the 1790s.

This poignant and heartbreaking portrait of the last days of Marie Antoinette, held prisoner along with her family in one deplorable location after another, follows the other two books in a trilogy. Unfortunately for me, I had not read the previous ones (Becoming Marie Antoinette: A Novel and Days of Splendor, Days of Sorrow: A Novel of Marie Antoinette) and I believe that was a mistake. My heart broke for Marie Antoinette and her husband and children as they are maligned and abused by the cruel and violent emerging leaders of the Revolution. The author, who obviously spent years researching her subject, brought forth a picture of Queen Marie Antoinette that gave her a new dimension than that painted by textbooks and history accounts that don't show the human side of this woman as wife, sister-in-law, daughter and mother. I'm not a scholar of French History in any case, my knowledge is actually quite sketchy, but now I feel compelled to do some investigation of my own.

I would recommend to anyone interested in the monarchy of France in the 1790s and the study of a woman who has been portrayed perhaps inaccurately to the rest of the world. The horrible violence of the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror left me with chills and my heart broke for what was done to this royal family in the name of the "Republic" and freedom from tyranny.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballentine for the ebook ARC to review.