Jan 2015: The Red Lily Crown- Marked Spoilers Allowed

[Becky, Moddess]

Welcome to 2015 all! Our first group read thread is now open! Make sure to mark all spoilers, and happy reading! :)

[Lisasue]

Already started it, and I am really enjoying this book. Great selection...

[Gretchen, Keep your head up or the crown slips]

I read this book last year. I thought it had potential but fell just a little short for me. I'm interested to see what other people think.

[Kate]

I absolutely loved it - I've been a huge fan of Elizabeth Loupas since her first book "The Second Duchess." Her heroine in RLQ is scrappy and tough; the alchemical stuff is fascinating; and the villains - the Duke and his mistress Bianca - are so horrible you will spend the last half of the book praying ardently that they die miserably. And there's just a little whiff of magic and sorcery - see the scene with the hedge-grown labyrinth!

[[deleted user]]

I also am a Elizabeth Loupas fan. I had wrote gripping in my review of this book. It was one of those books you found yourself absorbed in.

[Louise]

I just started this book and am looking forward to getting into it a bit more. I really enjoyed another book by the same author - The Flower Reader.

[Melanie]

I really enjoyed the Flower Reader too. Looking forward to reading this one.

[Delphine]

I will start this book tonight. The comments are great so I can't wait!

[Whitney]

So Jealous this book looks awesome but I couldn't find it at my library and can't buy any books right now.

[Jayme(theghostreader)]

I couldn't find this book book in my library's database. I looked by title, author and ISBN number. I tried two different libraries.

[Chris]

As with Chakara & Jayme, I also could not find this in our library system. It's been my issue with quite a few of the books that were selected over the past year ( or length!!). But Happy Reading and will get a feel vicariously of the book.

[Jayme(theghostreader)]

My next move is to call the libraries and see if they do have them.

[Whitney]

i find libraries overall lack in recent historical fiction. is it that small of a subgenre?

[Jayme(theghostreader)]

well according to their online catalog, neither of the libraries carry the book.

[Maggie]

Use WorldCat.org [short for World Catalogue] to find the nearest library to your zip code that carries a specific book. No cost to join and easy to search. I had fun seeing which libraries throughout the word had my novels.

[Lisasue]

This was just a fantastically entertaining book. I liked it even better than The Second Duchess which is saying a lot. So well-researched and exciting. Actually found myself reading it on the elevator after work. It was that fun to read.

[Lisasue]

Chakara wrote: "So Jealous this book looks awesome but I couldn't find it at my library and can't buy any books right now."

There's always used copies out there. That's what I did...

Message me your address, and I will send you mine, if you promise to donate it to your library when you are done, so someone else can read it.

[Jackballoon]

Do You mean the red lily crown? I found that but not the red crown lily.

[Jayme(theghostreader)]

Ok so I called my library and they don't have the book and none of the other libraries in their inter library loan have it either so they said they had to get it from an outside source.

[Kate]

Jackballoon wrote: "Do You mean the red lily crown? I found that but not the red crown lily."

I think this thread has an inaccurate title - it should be "The Red Lily Crown" not "The Red Crown Lily."

[Jackballoon]

Kate wrote: "Jackballoon wrote: "Do You mean the red lily crown? I found that but not the red crown lily."

I think this thread has an inaccurate title - it should be "The Red Lily Crown" not "The Red Crown Li..."

Thanks Kate

[Patricia]

Fortunately, my library did have this one, so I have picked it up & have just started reading. Seems promising; looking forward to it.

[Margaret]

I don't find it on kindle sadly.

[Lisasue]

Margaret wrote: "I don't find it on kindle sadly."

I'm pretty sure it's available on Kindle, as I checked the price on it before I ordered a used copy online. Seems like the Kindle price was like around $8.00. You might want to check again, Margaret...

[Jackballoon]

Yes, I got it today from Amazon for kindle.

[Whitney]

Lisasuej wrote: "Chakara wrote: "So Jealous this book looks awesome but I couldn't find it at my library and can't buy any books right now."

There's always used copies out there. That's what I did...

Message me y..."

You are so nice to me! However it would be a waste on me since I couldn't get the book I went ahead and started a few more so I wouldn't be able to read it until end of the month or beginning of feb.

[Eve]

I really enjoyed this and admired the research. The author's note in the end was great because I was not aware that so much of the storyline was based in fact. My only criticism is the cover. Had the book not been recommended by Goodreads, I probably would have passed it by. The bodice-ripper cover is a disservice to the book.

[Jackie]

Kate wrote: "Jackballoon wrote: "Do You mean the red lily crown? I found that but not the red crown lily."

I think this thread has an inaccurate title - it should be "The Red Lily Crown" not "The Red Crown Li..."

Fixed it!


My library doesn't have this one either, so I'll probably pick it up used somewhere at some point. Some libraries allow patrons to suggest books they should buy or you can ILL from other counties. Takes some time, but at you can get it for free.

[Jessica]

I finished this book about a week ago and I really liked it. The story was a riveting mix of history, romance, and a bit of magic. Great group selection for this month!

[Jayme(theghostreader)]

So I called my library today for a status on the book. The librarian told me they located the book at a library that is about half an hour away from me. So it should reach my library this week.

[Peaktopeak]

I really liked this book. Thanks to the Group for introducing me to a new author! I enjoyed the detail of the history and both the alchemy and romance elements of the story. I'm with Eve in that I didn't know a lot about the era and place so finding out how much was based in fact was great! I thought that the deadly garden/labyrinth was fascinating. A little disappointing to find that was completely fictional hahaha. I thought Loupas did a great job with Chiara. Chiara grew and changed a lot over the time of the story but I never felt like I wasn't reading the same character. I really enjoyed those scenes where she made herself think things through so that she could also get what she wanted. I worry a little for her in Cornwall - will she be accepted etc.? But I thought it was a very hopeful ending.

[Tocotin]

Wow, thank you for choosing this, I really enjoyed this. I think the concept of a low-born girl who's around powerful people NOT because of her looks/sexual value was great.
I felt really sorry for Bianca Cappello though. How much of the detail about the truth of her hold on the Grand Duke is real? Because it looks excessive and disrespectful. What she had to endure at his hands was abuse plain and simple, and wasn't written convincingly enough for me to believe she liked it.

[Kate]

It was definitely abuse that Bianca suffered at times at the Duke's hands, but my impression was that even if she didn't always enjoy his tastes, she felt they were well worth indulging in exchange for the power and luxury of being the Duke's mistress. And frankly, she was such a horrible person in her own right (the way she enjoyed humiliating the Duchess; her treatment of underlings and animals; her complicity in the deaths of peasant women and children) that I didn't feel sorry for her.

I did appreciate, though, that in the final quarter of the book she seemed to feel some regret for some of the things she had done, and faced the denouement of the story with a dignity that I finally did have some pity for.

[Tocotin]

Yes, I liked the treatment of Bianca in the final part of the book too. She was human there. In the previous parts, she was just an evil plot device on two legs. The part with Chiara's dog was such an overkill, it was a bit ridiculous.

I have to agree that she did live in luxury due to becoming the Duke's mistress, but power? What kind of power did she have? She didn't try her hand in politics, she didn't have much influence on the Duke, she certainly didn't have his respect... Can't see any power there.

So again, I wonder how much of the detail about her sexual life with the Duke, and about the murders she might have had her hand in (other than the possible murder of her husband) is historical fact.

It's easy to feel sympathy for the Grand Duchess: she was an unhappy wife and mother, and of frail health, and living in a foreign country, blah blah. But why the need to vilify Bianca Cappello so completely? And ridicule her too – her physique is always described in coldly unflattering terms, and she is always being humiliated, if not by the Duke then by the heroine or by the Duchess. Why does she deserve all this? She was a real human being, after all.

[Peaktopeak]

Interesting. I agree that the Duke and Bianca were somewhat over the top as villains. I may have had moments where I felt a little sorry for Bianca, but in general, I thought she was trading the role playing/abuse for, like some already said, luxury and power. I thought she had power. She even ended up getting to marry the Duke and have the fake baby and all. It didn't work out the way she expected probably, but she had it and when she went around as the Venetian Noblewoman she was she certainly lorded it over everyone.

So given all that, I didn't really buy the humble positions she took at the end. I felt like she was just making one last ditch effort. A last ditch effort that didn't succeed. Reading the Author's Note, I felt it had been a plausible explanation for events, but who knows. I did love to hate her though hahaha.

In fact, I loved the way the very start of the book alluded to the uncertainty of it all when the old Duke's mistress was caught trying to take jewels 'given' to her once he had died. I remember thinking - you don't plan and have things already spirited away? You knew he was going to die! It all came full circle right?

[Tocotin]

Wait please. The lady with the jewels — Camilla Martelli — was NOT the old Duke's mistress. She was his legitimate second wife. Why should she spirit away stuff? She might have received the jewels from him.

The vulnerability of her position was in that she was the Duke's morganatic wife, therefore not a Duchess. The Duke was too lazy, or too selfish, to give her suitable security in her will, and he in fact failed his favorite daughter Isabella in the exact same manner. The lack of independence and security caused indirectly Isabella's death.

In the book, Isabella is depicted as worthy of sympathy and pity, but Camilla is not. She is almost another version of Bianca. I'm beginning to notice a pattern...

[Peaktopeak]

Ahhh. OK. Oh well. I didn't feel sorry for Isabella either.

[Donna]

I guess, I'm in the minority here. This book didn't work for me. It took me so long to get through it....baby bites is what it took. I gave it 2 stars.

[Lesley]

3.5 stars, but no facility here for halves. I wasn't drawn in to the story until around midway. Not sure why because it is very evident it is well researched and written, but that's how it was for me.
It was really only that I began to be interested in Chiara and how things turned out for her that kept me reading. I was pleased I persevered.

[Melanie]

I fell in the middle of Ella's Gran and Donna. It took me a long time to make it though as well. I was really looking forward to reading this one since I loved the Flower Reader but it just didn't reel me in.

[Marianne]

I liked this book and gave it four stars. We went to Italy a couple of years ago and I've been especially interested in Italian history since then.

[Jayme(theghostreader)]

I will finally start this book today.

[Jayme(theghostreader)]

I got through part 1 and I just want to say the tests Chiara had to perform were stupid and really proved nothing about her virginity. Overall, I am liking it.

[Kate]

Interestingly, one of those "tests" goes back to Roman times: a myth where a Vestal Virgin who was accused of breaking her vows proved she was not lying by carrying water in a sieve. (It wasn't so much that not-spilling-water = viginity; it was more like "If I try to do the impossible and succeed, Vesta is clearly supporting me in my vows, ergo I am still upholding them chastity and all.")

So the sieve test has its roots in antiquity, though of course it is completely effing ridiculous in proving anything about anybody's physical state. I got a real kick out of that scene; first that the tests were so absurd, and then that simple scientific methods were used to defeat them.

[Jayme(theghostreader)]

I can't believe people believed the things they believed back then.

[Judy]

Finished it in January. I would give 2.5 if possible, but gave it three because I wanted to see how Chiara fared. In some ways, this book is more a romance. The ending was a bit unbelievable.

[Jayme(theghostreader)]

So far I am not liking Francesco and I don't like how he is treating Bianca. I do like Chiara and Magister Ruanno.

[Deborah]

Spoiler warning!

Dreadful, dreadful, dreadful - bodice-ripping nonsense - IMHO (which is, of course, never humble in my own opinion....)

The Red Lily Crown: A Novel of Medici Florence

[Louise]

Part of my problem with this book is that I didn't really care for Chiara's love interest in the story. Also there was a strong vengeance theme which isn't really my thing.