Monday, January 04, 2021

The Fabergé Secret by Charles Belfoure

 

First Line: The Tsar stood up from the dinner table and smiled at Dimitri.
 
St. Petersburg, 1903. Prince Dimitri Markhov has been sheltered by his family's wealth and privilege his entire life, and he's proud to be a close personal friend of Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra. Spurned by his spiteful wife, Dimitri channels his energy into his occupation-- architecture-- and a series of affairs. All this begins to change when he meets Dr. Katya Golitsyn and when he is confronted by the death and destruction of a pogrom. Dimitri is horrified and becomes determined to make a stand no matter the cost to himself.

~

With this second book that I've read written by Charles Belfoure, I am now convinced that he's not the writer for me. As in The Paris Architect, a self-absorbed man suddenly becomes a staunch defender of the oppressed. Belfoure, who is an architect himself, has a knack for choosing architecture and historic periods that fascinate me. In The Fabergé Secret, it's the reign of Nicholas II and Alexandra. This is a period in Russia filled with incredible beauty and indescribable brutality, and Belfoure does well in depicting the pogroms that were rife in the country at the time. But then... there's the rest of the story.

In reading The Fabergé Secret, it felt as though Belfoure fell so deeply in love with his setting that he forgot all about including any action or real movement in the plot until well past the halfway point in the book. I was left wondering if anything was ever going to happen. The author also felt comfortable in sacrificing well-known historical facts to his fictional tale.

At the end of the day, I found The Fabergé Secret to be a predictable, standard, historical romance laced with a bit of architecture. A pleasant diversion that could have been so much more.

 
The Fabergé Secret by Charles Belfoure
eISBN: 9781448304462
Severn House Publishers © 2021
eBook, 256 pages

Historical Fiction, Standalone
Rating: D+
Source: Net Galley

10 comments:

  1. Oh, I am sorry to hear that this one fell flat for you, Cathy. I do agree, though, that time-and-place context are not enough to sustain a story. I give you credit for giving Belfoure a second chance. Now you know...

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    1. Yes. Now I know to leave his books alone and let others enjoy them.

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  2. I think I'll give this a miss. A shame that it could have been more.

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    1. I think you're making the right decision, Jen.

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  3. Oh, gosh. This is one of those "you read the book so I don't have to." I don't think I would have anyway, not appealing to me.

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    1. I found myself thinking about you a time or two as I read this book, Kathy. I knew that it wouldn't be your cup of tea.

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  4. I don't like books related to tsars or tsarinas. My grandparents and their relatives were some of the poor people oppressed by the tsars. Most of their country, Poland, was annexed by the tsar in the 1800s and wasn't independent until 1918 after WWI.

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  5. Oh, I have to say The Paris Architect is one of my loved books. It's great.

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    1. Which proves the saying "No two people ever read the same book." :-)

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