The Fortune Hunter by Daisy Goodwin Review!

Product Details

• Hardcover: 480 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press (July 29, 2014)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1250043891
• ISBN-13: 978-1250043894
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About the Book

In 1875, Sisi, the Empress of Austria is the woman that every man desires and every woman envies.

Beautiful, athletic and intelligent, Sisi has everything - except happiness. Bored with the stultifying etiquette of the Hapsburg Court and her dutiful but unexciting husband, Franz Joseph, Sisi comes to England to hunt. She comes looking for excitement and she finds it in the dashing form of Captain Bay Middleton, the only man in Europe who can outride her. Ten years younger than her and engaged to the rich and devoted Charlotte, Bay has everything to lose by falling for a woman who can never be his. But Bay and the Empress are as reckless as each other, and their mutual attraction is a force that cannot be denied.

Full of passion and drama, THE FORTUNE HUNTER tells the true story of a nineteenth century Queen of Hearts and a cavalry captain, and the struggle between love and duty.

About this author

DAISY GOODWIN, a Harkness scholar who attended Columbia University’s film school after earning a degree in history at Cambridge University, is a leading television producer in the U.K. Her poetry anthologies, including 101 Poems That Could Save Your Life, have introduced many new readers to the pleasures of poetry, and she was Chair of the judging panel of the 2010 Orange Prize for Fiction. She and her husband, an ABC TV executive, have two daughters and live in London. After the success of her first novel, THE AMERICAN HEIRESS, she wrote THE FORTUNE HUNTER — coming soon!

http://us.macmillan.com/author/daisyg...

My Thoughts

This is a story about love in the Victorian era. Charlotte is a young woman, heiress to the Lennox fortune, who is interested in photography meets Captain Bay Middleton. Bay is a cavalry officer of modest means who falls in love with Charlotte. They become engaged but there is another person in this scenario, Sisi, Empress of Austria, who is in England to escape the rigidity of the Hapsburg court. She is an accomplished rider and becomes involved in some fox hunts and wants Bay as her 'pilot'. Bay truly loves Charlotte but becomes enamored of Sisi. Is it because Sisi is royalty and shares his love of riding horses? Is he really a "Fortune Hunter"? He knows that even being engaged to Charlotte, he is still below her in social status and even more so with the Empress. This is a novel that tells us what life was like among the royalty and peerage. A very descriptive tale of Victorian England and the duty that is expected by the royal family. Even in this era I found Charlotte to be a strong person but vulnerable at the same time and I really liked her. This is a novel loosely based on real people about a love triangle between Charlotte, Bay and Sisi  during Queen Victoria's reign. I really enjoyed this book and highly recommend it to anyone who has read Daisy Goodwin's previous novel, The American Heiress or anyone who loves historical fiction.

I received a copy of this book for review and was not monetarily compensated for my review.