Blois, 1705. The château of Duc Hugo d’Amboise simmers with rivalry and intrigue. Henriette d’Augustin, one of five mistresses of the duc, lives at the chateau with her daughter. When the duc’s wife, Duchesse Charlotte, maliciously undermines a new mistress, Letitia, Henriette is forced to choose between position and morality. She fights to maintain her status whilst targeted by the duchesse who … who will do anything to harm her enemies. The arrival of charismatic tarot reader, Romain de Villiers, further escalates tensions as rivals in love and domestic politics strive for supremacy.In a society where status is a matter of life and death, Henriette must stay true to herself, her daughter, and her heart, all the while hiding a painful secret of her own.
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Welcome to the château of Duc Hugo d’Amboise, where status and political jockeying is exchanged between the sheets. Life is good for the Duc until his new mistress, Letitia, arrives. He’s captivated by her and spends all his time with her, practically ignoring the other mistresses and his wife. Duchesse Charlotte seethes with envy and plots to get rid of the new mistress. She cajoles the other mistresses to help her and Henriette is caught in the middle. Will she forego her position at the château to follow her heart or will she bend to the will of the Duchesse in order to secure her and her daughter’s stability?
Kate Murdoch has done it again. She’s taken one of my favourite time periods (early 18th century France) and breathed new life into it. Everything from the day to day life of the household and all its residents to the class system to clothing is 100% historically accurate. Her descriptive narration articulates every nuance of the story as each scene unfolds. In rich detail and from multiple points of view, the reader not only connects with each character but in a sense, becomes a part of the story. I couldn’t stop reading once I started, and even lost sleep because of it. My husband blames Kate Murdoch and I have to say, the tiredness I felt the next day was worth it.
If you love immersive historical fiction with intrigue, backstabbing and social climbing plus a darn good mystery to unravel, The Orange Grove is a must-read! Highly recommend and will, I’m sure, earn plenty of awards.
My Rating: 5+ stars
Wonderful historical novel about competition among mistresses (and the duchess) at a chateau in early 18th century France. Lots of evocative details and great characterization.
In these challenging pandemic days, I have sought for mental escape by returning to reading old friends on my bookshelves. Many of these novels I replaced because they were falling apart after years of re-reading. I know these books well, and trust them and their stories to leave me with hope, and not despair. I have avoided new books, because I wanted to be certain they offered me the right kind of escape. So, I was delighted to read The Orange Grove and find myself not only highly entertained, but also given the right kind of escape to another place and time, and a new book friend.
I loved the television series Versailles. Reading The Orange Grove felt to me like stepping into story that could be an offshoot of Versailles. Lush, lustful, decadent, yet all drawn together by thick, twisting stems of love and passion, The Orange Grove constructs a tale set in a true hot house. A hot house where women either flourish or perish.
The Orange Grove tells a tale of one wife, five mistresses and one duke, living together in a large chateau with their respective children. Rivals for the attention and love of one man, the four older women feel threatened when the duke brings a new, young mistress into the chateau. What these women are prepared to do for survival and supremacy is the core narrative of The Orange Grove. The novel also explores the relationships between these women – most of them unhealthy relationships. The oppressive environment of the chateau is like a climbing vine of ivy around mistresses and wife alike.
Murdoch pens well-rounded, believable, and very alive characters in this story. Her rich, visual and sensory prose crafts with immense skill the confined and controlled world of the chateau and the women who live there. She paints vivid, engaging word pictures painted on the page and draws us into her story, allowing us to see, taste and feel what her people see, taste and feel. From the first to last page, I was utterly engaged in Murdoch’s storytelling.
The Orange Grove constructs a powerful and thought- provoking metaphor for patriarchy. Patriarchy driving women to murder, and madness. Wonderfully researched and told, The Orange Grove is an enthralling read.
Kate Murdoch’s historical novel, The Orange Grove, is a genuine love story, albeit one that is provocatively enmeshed in the Zeitgeist of the French nobility circa 1690 – 1720. The real nobility in this tale lies in the slowly blossoming love between Henriette, a mistress to a noble and royally connected duc, and Romain, a very tenuously connected spiritualist/tarot reader who comes to make his fortune off the ennui and vanity of the duc’s household members. So, a mistress and a charlatan – our heroine and her hero?!! Ah, flawed though they be, these two are far from the most egregiously evil and self-serving of the many characters in this book (all of whom are economically described yet remarkably well characterized). The orange grove of the title is the scene of trysts, espionage, betrayal, sacrilege, and skullduggery involving both innocent and instigators, victims and perpetrators – not that dissolution and runaway ambition are not present elsewhere. Indeed, they permeate the book and the lives of its characters. Those who need be wary of triggers (violent and sexual) may wish to avoid this book altogether. Those hardy souls who venture this harrowing story are strongly advised to bear in mind the quote from Moliere’s The Misanthrope, which precedes Chapter One. Some will call the ending a happy one. Others (like me) will rejoice for those who found happiness and/or peace, but will not call the ending anything but bittersweet. (And everyone will understand how the bloody excesses of the next century’s French Revolution might in some ways be excused.) Five stars for fiendishly intricate plotting, vivid imagery and description, and finely sketched characters. This has been a voluntary ARC review.