May 15, 2022
The life of a princess is even worse than it looks. "All fairy tales serve the same purpose. One woman's story, told to warn the others. Here is how I lost my feet; here is how I lost my voice; here is how I lost my children....Fairy tales are not about sparkling shoes or white cats. They are about the ribbons that adorn, then sever, your neck." After dark, edgy takes on the worlds of fashion and art, Bourland takes on world-class running and royal living. Her heroine, a young South African athlete named Caroline Muller, is the fastest woman in the world, having set a record for the marathon at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Eighteen months later she has a career-ending fall that results in massive anatomical and facial reconstruction. She comes out the other side with ongoing limitations and brutal chronic pain--but on the plus side, her new face is drop-dead gorgeous. While recovering at a fancy American medical facility, she meets Prince Ferdinand II, Finn to his friends, scion of Lucomo, a fictional European principality known for its world-class gambling casino. Caro and Finn cross paths a few more times before their cat-and-mouse game of attraction ("I thought with my skin," she confesses) leads to Christmas Eve nuptials before an "ocean of strangers." By then Caroline's undergone a rudely abrupt pelvic exam, dozens of hours of invasive interviews, and a jarring initiation into a life pinned into place by an army of dressers, servants, minders, bodyguards, and paparazzi plus wall-to-wall surveillance technology. As Bourland explains in an afterword, Caroline's nightmarish experiences are inspired by the story of Charlene Wittstock, the current Princess Consort of Monaco, a Zimbabwe-born Olympic swimmer who "allegedly made at least two failed escape attempts before her wedding to Prince Albert" and "spent the lavish ceremony sobbing openly." An immersive depiction of the glittering surface and rotten core of royal living, painted in sumptuous and chilling detail.
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June 20, 2022
Bourland (Fake Like Me) draws inspiration from real-life princesses for her deliciously scandalous latest. In 2000, 21-year-old Caroline Muller from Johannesburg sets the record for the women’s marathon. A year and a half later, she falls during the Athens marathon, shattering her hip and suffering a cheekbone fracture. After five surgeries at an American hospital, where she meets Prince Ferdinand Fieschi of Lucomo, who’s recovering after a car accident in which his fiancée was killed, her reconstructed face radiates with a new beauty. A relationship develops between Caroline and Ferdinand, and she hopes for a fairy tale marriage (“The force of such beauty is meant to destabilize a person. I was no exception”). The match turns out to be anything but happy, as she is soon confronted by the ridiculous demands of producing heirs and respecting etiquette. Indeed, the life of a princess is far lonelier and more dangerous than she imagined. Though a plot involving the royals’ shady business practices feels anticlimactic, Bourland offers a smart critique of a corrupt world’s disenchanting effects on a naive young woman. The result is satisfyingly dark and twisted. Agent: Victoria Sanders, Victoria Sanders and Assoc.
Starred review from July 1, 2022
Princess Caroline of Lucomo opens her tale with a sprint, attempting flight from the jeweled confines of the Talon, as her tiny country's palace is known, before explaining she was once, actually, the world's fastest woman. Injury took Caroline Muller, a South African Olympic marathoner, out of the sport and into the arms of Finn, a fellow convalescent at the upscale rehab facility paid for by Caroline's running sponsor and heir to an idyllic, wealthy European nation Caroline has never heard of. After their whirlwind romance come the joys and challenges of a typical life, but Caroline's difficult mother-in-law is a queen, Caroline's trouble conceiving a highly surveilled matter of global import, her eventual children veritable possessions of the country, and Finn's financial concerns the result of centuries-old national entanglements. With trademark style and sophistication Bourland (I'll Eat When I'm Dead, 2017; Fake Like Me, 2019) plays with the tropes of the princess tales, true and not, that we know as well as our own names as she giftedly conjures Caroline's glittering, threatening worlds. Despite danger everywhere, Caroline is the captivating narrator of her own story: a domestic drama, sparkling fairy tale, cautionary fable, and suspenseful mystery all laced into one.
COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
July 1, 2022
Princess Caroline of Lucomo opens her tale with a sprint, attempting flight from the jeweled confines of the Talon, as her tiny country's palace is known, before explaining she was once, actually, the world's fastest woman. Injury took Caroline Muller, a South African Olympic marathoner, out of the sport and into the arms of Finn, a fellow convalescent at the upscale rehab facility paid for by Caroline's running sponsor and heir to an idyllic, wealthy European nation Caroline has never heard of. After their whirlwind romance come the joys and challenges of a typical life, but Caroline's difficult mother-in-law is a queen, Caroline's trouble conceiving a highly surveilled matter of global import, her eventual children veritable possessions of the country, and Finn's financial concerns the result of centuries-old national entanglements. With trademark style and sophistication Bourland (I'll Eat When I'm Dead, 2017; Fake Like Me, 2019) plays with the tropes of the princess tales, true and not, that we know as well as our own names as she giftedly conjures Caroline's glittering, threatening worlds. Despite danger everywhere, Caroline is the captivating narrator of her own story: a domestic drama, sparkling fairy tale, cautionary fable, and suspenseful mystery all laced into one.
COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.