Mistress of the Sun

I got hooked on watching Men's figure skating last night and stayed up WAY too late.  By then I was all wound up and past that point of sleepy, so I decided to read for a while.  Next thing I knew it was past one in the morning and I had finished my book.  SOOOO today I feel like I was hit by a bus, BUT I finally found a book that I enjoyed.  I have been on a bit of a bad streak.  Mistress of the Sun by Sandra Gulland is about Louis de la Valliere--the mistress of King Louis of France.  The book starts off pretty slow--not gonna lie I almost gave up, but then it picks up.  It starts when Louise is just a child.  She is a tom-boy who loves horses and hunting and being outside.  Then she goes to court and ends up falling for King Louis.  He loves her also because of her love of horses and her ability to ride and hunt.  He is married of course, and they begin to have a relationship.   Things were different in France than they were in England, and they had to keep their relationship secret--nobody could know.  For a while I thought, wow this really is a love story--how sad that he had to be married to a ugly Spanish queen who he hates. Then she has a bunch of kids by him and over time he begins to become more corrupted--as kings seemed to do back then.  It is a sad story and I would love to know the true story about Louise because she seems like a very interesting and wonderful person.  That could just be the History teacher coming out in me though.  As always I was very interested in the lives of the people at court and all of the lies and intrigues that occurred there (poisonings, murder, affairs, secret births, abortions, etc.). This book also gave a super interesting look at the lives of the royalty at the time---I find much of what the royalty did crazy and yet am very interested in them:) This author has also written a 3 part series about Josephine Bonaparte---I will let you know how I like them:)