by Michelle Cooper
2.5 out of 5 StarsPrincess Sophia FitzOsborne has always lived in the crumbling castle on the island nation of Montmaray with her eccentric family and villagers. Yet, sixteen-year-old Sophie chronicles her dreams of England and balls and falling in love in her diary. However, the outside world may b...
An excellent start. Very plausible and a well-integrated use of historical events. Only misstep was the gay subplot w/ Sophie's brother and cousin. The reactions all sounded very off for that time period. It would have been much more of an issue then.That said, the book did not amaze me as it did so...
Told in diary format, this is the story of a family of impoverished royalty (one of their ancestors declared an island a kingdom) making do as the last few residents of Montmaray.The first half of the book is entirely set-up, readable enough, but all too easy to put down. Then the Germans referred ...
Much of the world is captivated by the Spanish Civil War, which is dividing Europe, and King Edward VIII’s’s abdication, which allowed him to marry his divorced lover, but it’s been a long time since anyone paid much attention to the little island nation of Montmaray, isolated in the Bay of Biscay b...
A couple of weeks ago, my friend B. (who sometimes comments here as the Baroness) mentioned A Brief History of Montmaray and The FitzOsbornes in Exile as being very Maureen-y books. Shortly afterwards, I was at the library* and happened to see the first one on the shelf. So I snatched it and settled...
This was very much a so-so book for me.The characters were all decent characters. Pretty well developed, mostly likeable and easy to relate to. The writing was interesting. It was in a journal format, so a tad different from what I'm used to, but nothing that difficult to get into.What made this an ...
Sophie FitzOsborne is a pretty typical teenager - she has crushes, is alternately proud of and embarrassed by her eccentric family, and feels conflicted about eventually leaving home. Sophie also happens to be a royal princess living in a crumbling castle on the tiny island kingdom of Montmaray. F...
WHY: Sophie FitzOsborne lives in a crumbling castle in the tiny island kingdom of Montmaray (a fictional island in the English Channel) with her eccentric and impoverished royal family. Sophie decides to chronicle day-to-day life on the island. But this is 1936, and the news that trickles in from th...
I loved this book surprisingly much! It was like I Capture the Castle only with all the things I didn't like in that book changed: the useless parents were less present, about half the obsessing about boys was replaced with adventure, and I liked most of the characters better. Plus there were carrie...
This book makes me glad I'm not a princess.At first I didn't think the plot would ever take off, and I had difficulty deciding what the familial relationships between the characters were. Perhaps I had that problem because my edition had no blurb (why do publishers DO that?) and I had no idea what t...
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