The Fortune Hunter

Locations
Call Number: Fiction, Adult Book / Fiction / Historical / Goodwin, Daisy
On Shelf At: Downtown Library, Pittsfield Branch

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Pittsfield Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Historical / Goodwin, Daisy	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Historical / Goodwin, Daisy	4-week checkout	Due 05-21-2024

"Empress Elizabeth of Austria, known as "Sisi," is the Princess Diana of nineteenth-century Europe. Famously beautiful, as captured in a portrait with diamond stars in her hair, she is unfulfilled in her marriage to the older Emperor Franz Joseph. Sisi has spent years evading the stifling formality of royal life on her private train or yacht or, whenever she can, on the back of a horse. Captain Bay Middleton is dashing, young, and the finest horseman in England. He is also impoverished, with no hope of buying the horse needed to win the Grand National--until he meets Charlotte Baird. A clever, plainspoken heiress whose money gives her a choice among suitors, Charlotte falls in love with Bay, the first man to really notice her, for his vulnerability as well as his glamour. When Sisi joins the legendary hunt organized by Earl Spencer in England, Bay is asked to guide her on the treacherous course. Their shared passion for riding leads to an infatuation that threatens the growing bond between Bay and Charlotte, and all of their futures. This brilliant new novel by Daisy Goodwin is a lush, irresistible story of the public lives and private longings of grand historical figures"-- Provided by publisher.
A beautiful empress trapped in a loveless marriage, a dashing but impoverished horseman and a clever heiress form a passionate love triangle in 19th-century England against a backdrop of the legendary Grand National competition.

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Interesting characters but slow storyline submitted by eapearce on September 2, 2014, 2:06pm Goodwin's choice to focus on Empress Elisabeth of Austria and Hungary in this book was an excellent one. The eccentric empress, although not particularly well-remembered today, was famously beautiful and led a fascinating life in 19th century Europe. Although The Fortune Hunter is a work of fiction, Goodwin clearly conducted painstaking research to portray the characters in this book accurately. The three main characters in the story and their relationships with one another are real and I enjoyed learning about the Empress and about Victorian England culture through Goodwin's portrayals of the Empress, her English pilot Bay Middleton and Middleton's love interest, the heiress Charlotte Baird. Unfortunately, however, the story itself plods along. Few truly exciting or interesting things happen, and the dialogue is subdued and uneventful. The relationships between the characters never truly develop into anything that I found meaningful or noteworthy as a reader, and the climax of the story was hard to even pinpoint. Goodwin does little to explore the thoughts or decision-making processes in the characters, making for bland descriptions of events that don't seem to have adequate premises. As interested as I was in the figure of Empress Elisabeth, I struggled to get through the book, continued to hope that there would be an exciting conclusion, and ended up disappointed.

slow moving submitted by smgop on August 11, 2017, 9:46am I was excited to get this book, but unlike Goodwin's other captivating books, this one was laborious to get through. Had to put it down, ultimately.