I was excited to read this since it was about Saint Augustine’s unnamed mistress. However, I found The Confessions of X to be a more superior about his mistress. The Confessions of X focused on her redemption and her love towards God. I did not find any of this here. I found Leona to be very manipulative and self-centered. She was not likable and did not seem human. She also did not struggle with internal conflict that the other story. Thus, I recommend readers to skip this and read The Confessions of X instead.

*received for free from netgalley for honest review* Love historical fiction especially ones like this! they did really great creating a fictional life for the mistress!

I appreciate the publisher allowing me to read this book. I found the book very interesting and the setting fascinating and can't wait to read more.

I really enjoyed this book. It was very well researched and very plausible as if it might have happened just that way. I would definitely read other books by this author and it was a privilege to get to read this in exchange for honest feedback.

Augustine wrote in his book Confessions that he had a long term lover with whom he had a son. She is never named either for her protection or like most women in historical writings she was deemed Insignificant and property. In this book we get to meet Leona in the realistic setting of being Pagan, working and a lower-class than Augustine. The implications being that their child would be taken from her and given to Augustine as his property or to the Church. This point and all the emotions of injustice, fear and desperation of being a woman, partner (But not wife) and mother can at times make Leona seem conniving and manipulative. Her hopes, dreams and pain are explored very well.
The author doesn’t shy away from the corruption found in the church of Christ only a few hundred years after his death. The political intrigue, aspirations and false conversions are laid bare as the writing is on the wall that the Roman Empire ties itself to the new religion of Christianity.
I enjoyed the way Leona is giving us a front row seat throughout most of Augustine’s life. I was left slightly dismayed that Her Story, her voice, was still outshined by Augustine. I know the author did excellent research for this book by the historical markers she includes throughout.
I received a free copy of this book in lieu of an honest review #NetGalley #TheSaintsMistress

i didn't know saint's could have mistresses and this book really surprised me, it felt historically accurate and I liked the characters in it.

This is historical fiction exploring the youth and love life of St. Augustine, largely before his conversion to Christianity. Told from the perspective of Leona, a lower class girl who is seduced by a handsome young man who promises to teach her to read. The story started slow, but I was soon engrossed by the descriptions of the decline of the Roman Empire, the North African cities and complex overlapping religious tensions of Manicheans, pre-Christian pagan belief, and the new Christianity of the Roman elites of the time. As Leona came into her own, the story sped up and I found myself finishing it before I was fully ready for it to end. Recommend if you're into history, Christian history, or historical romantic fiction - it is reminiscent of a much more modern version of Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome series.

The Saint's Mistress is a totally unique work of historical fiction, which I encourage everyone to read.

The time, people and place was almost completely new to me which only added to how brilliantly the story was written. The story follows Leona and her journey intertwined with Augustine. As historical fiction it is unique in that it leans so heavily into the emotion and less time is spent on actual events, but that really works in this book's favour.

A Sinful Love Affair
The Saint’s Mistress is unique as far as historical fiction goes, focusing on the ancient Roman Empire, around the time that it was beginning to crumble and fail. It is a love story, but also a story of finding faith, and fulfilling one’s purpose in life, even if it means giving up what seems most important. The story is based loosely on the life of Saint Augustine (Aurelius), and his mistress, Leona. It is historical fact that Aurelius converted to Christianity in later adulthood, and that he had a wife, and a son. For the purposes of The Saint’s Mistress, Aurelius’ wife was a peasant girl named Leona, and therefore she could not formally be wed to him, making her a mistress at best, and their son a bastard at worst.Women in ancient Rome facts: education, marriage, motherhood and rights - HistoryExtra

Leona and Aurelius fall in love while he is teaching her to read and write– something that would have been unheard of in the Roman Empire; young women of the peasant class had no reason to be literate. But, it is Leona’s thirst for knowledge, her desire to better herself despite social expectations, and her quick wit that endear her to Aurelius. The conflict in the plot of the story comes from Leona’s desire to convince Aurelius to defy the laws of the Empire by marrying her despite their different social classes. Instead, she becomes his mistress, raising their son alongside him, and moving to exotic locations like Carthage and Milan. But overlaying their otherwise happy life, is the constant threat of Aurelius’ mother, and his patron, forcing a lucrative marriage on him, which would force Leona aside and restrict her ability to see their son.

My sobs stopped and I sat very still. How could both be true at the same time? How could unendurable sorrow exist beside God’s steadfast love? And the answer came to me: how could they not be true?…The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. To prove it, he gives us each other to care for. — Leona

The Saint’s Mistress follows Aurelius and Leona across the Roman Empire, and across their entire adult lives, ending with the historically accurate death of Aurelius in the city of Hippo during the Vandal’s siege of the city. The story has many poignant, heart rending moments– life in the Roman Empire was neither easy, nor simple. But it is through the hardship that Leona and Aurelius each discover faith, and become the leaders they were meant to be, even though they have to walk their paths to greatness alone.

History is silent on the identity of Saint Augustine’s mistress (or the wife of his heart, as he calls Leona), but I like to think that this tale could be accurate. Although Leona’s life is not always happy, nor even what she might have dreamed of, it is a fulfilling one. She would have lived the type of life that would have illuminated the path to faith, and higher education, for many women to come after her in history. The Saint’s Mistress is a beautiful, fast paced, historical romance, with a little bit of “literary epic-ness” thrown in for good measure; in short, I would definitely recommend this book!

This is Leona's story and her strength, conviction and character goes to show a lot about who she was as a person. I love how the author delves into the history and circumstances that thrust Augustine into the limelight and frankly speaking there is something intriguing about someone's childhood that makes for an interesting read.
Thanks Netgalley for the eARC.

Saint Augustine’s writings influenced the development of Western philosophy and Western Christianity. But before he became the bishop of Hippo Regius, North Africa, as a young man he fell in love with a peasant girl. And as a man of aristocratic blood, together they defied social norms and traditions.

Thagaste, North Africa, 371 AD. Leona, a goat shepherd’s daughter, helps at weaver’s shop. She catches an eye of Aurelius Augustine. At seventeen-years-old, he looks for students to practice his skills. He offers to teach Leona read. But this goes beyond teaching; their attraction to each other is mutual. When she gets pregnant, Aurelius is about to leave for Carthage to study rhetoric there. Defying norms as he is from a noble class and can't marry a peasant by Roman law or he'd have to forfeit all of his property. And with a help of a wealthy patron, they make Carthage their home for the next few years.

With the Roman Empire losing its grip in North Africa and the rise of Christianity, Augustine remains steadfast in Manichean believes. He refuses to join Christianity as some do to advance their careers. He wants to stay true to who he is. But life tests him and opens his eyes to rather heretical believes.

I enjoyed both characters very much. Aurelius’ excitement for philosophy and people who think is contagious. And he makes a mark as a charismatic orator. Leona is very rational and she is the voice for the poor. She fights for them to be fed when hunger strikes. She is a true example of what Christianity means: feeding a hungry person, comforting a distressed one, and caring for a sick one.

The time period is originally presented. It feels very real to experience the slipping power of the Roman Empire and the fear of people who are left to fend for themselves against savage tribes. The hardship of everyday life is well-felt and what the spreading Christianity brings is a balm for this kind of life. You can also feel the intense African heat and the warmness still radiating from the cobbled streets at the end of the day.

Superbly written. I was engrossed from the very beginning to the very end, with engaging and fully-developed characters offering a glimpse of their lives against the fourth century North African backdrop.

Thanks to NetGalley and CamCat Books for the chance to read an advance copy of this book.

This book is about Leona, a peasant girl from North Africa who meets the boy Aurelius who would become St. Augustine. He helps her improve her reading and education, they quickly begin an affair and conceive a child, and she follows him as he furthers his education and dabbles in a variety of different religions and mysticisms. Throughout, Leona is devoted to her not-husband and her son, but smart and independent enough to develop her own skills and accumulate savings for their family. This book spans from AD 371 to 430, following them throughout their lives.

I really liked Leona and appreciated how she faced the many challenges life brought her. I particularly enjoyed her own story of finding faith and how she had held herself at a distance before finally having her epiphany, in contrast to Aurelius jumping from place to place, diving into a belief system until he finds it to be empty at the bottom and starts again.

In most ways this is much more Leona's story than Augustine's--she is the narrator throughout the whole book, and sometimes she is separated from him and we miss crucial pieces of his story, including his ultimate conversion to Christianity. And yet he looms throughout the book, from the title, to the beginning and the end of the story, bookended by an author's note prefacing the story by noting that Leona is fictional though the mistress and son were real, and a historical note following the story with more details of Augustine.

I liked the story until we approached the end, and things just got continually bleaker. As a note, there is both sex and violence throughout the book; we have many non-detailed references to encounters between Leona and Aurelius (who of course are never married), and there are plenty of dead bodies, sick people, and gore sprinkled throughout the narrative. We don't get many references to race as we think of it now, we just learn that Leona is pretty and light-skinned (heavy sigh) compared to the rest of her family, Aurelius has blue eyes unlike most others in their city, and when we go to the cosmopolitan city of Carthage, Leona sees blonde people for the first time.

This was a fine work of historical fiction, with an interesting world to explore, even if I didn't like the ending and wished that Leona had more of her own life. Readers will also be enchanted by the little illustrations that pop up in chapters where we move to a new location. (Cover and book design is by Maryann Appel, I'm not sure if she's also the illustrator.)

For a historical fiction book, this tends to try and stick more to the historical figure that we know about (Saint Augustine) instead of the actually subject/title of the book, his mistress who we know little to nothing about. I feel the author definitely could have sprinkled in some more fiction, I would have like more time with Leona before the introduction of Augustine, to get to know her and form more of an opinion/bond rather the seeing her solely as Augustine's mistress.

Strangely there is also a bit too little history in some respects, Leona does not act in the way you would expect a woman of her time or station to act, she seems a bit too modern at times which can be jarring given the book's time period. At times she even comes off like a bit of a "Mary Sue".

It was by no means a horrible book, and perhaps it's just not geared enough to my preferred genre as it definitely seemed more heavily leaned to the romance side of historical fiction than I would have liked. The premise seemed interesting enough but I just couldn't get hooked into the book or the characters as I normally would.

If you love historical romance, definitely give this book a read, I feel it'll be right up your alley.

<u><b>Disclaimer</b>: Book---<i>Netgalley</i>---an honest review.</u>

This review was hard to write. Usually, I write small reviews. Especially for those books that I like so much that I don`t even think before clicking on the five stars vote. There, I am barely covering a handful of lines. That is because I liked them so much that no words would be needed to supply the novel`s official description.

<b>But</b>, it`s harder when one book forces a response out of me.
<i>I can hear the sea of words crashing into the walls of my skull.
The smell of salt lingers.</i>

This is the story of one woman that stood behind a great man. As it often happens, her name was forgotten, whereas, his remained printed into the carbon of literature.
The retelling wants to follow the life story of the woman that birthed a child to [author:Saint Augustine of Hippo|19250678]. <b>The name of choice for her is Leona</b> (it is not known what her real name was, or almost anything about her, really, so it remained to be this author`s choice how to name her.)
Maybe is <i>Leona</i> from, you guess it, <i>lioness</i>, but is just a presupposition.

It felt like reading fan-fiction. In the sense that the focus was perpetually directed towards Saint Augustine.<b> In fanfictions is customary to have at the base of the work the common characteristics of the world/character from which the fanfic writer builds his/her story</b>. The known variable here was Saint Augustine.

Because of this structure, it is easy to follow how the author paved the way towards his figure /the moment he entered the scene.
In every book that centers around a character that is taken from reality there is a dichotomy (a division in two).
<b>I.</b>
The first part is about a fictional medium <b>before that character enters in the novel</b>. At that point, it still retains our own imagine of its self . It is an imagine build on layers of previous knowledge about the subjected provided by different means. That is the pause of suspense, where the reader wonders how the character will be portrayed.

<b>II.</b>
The second part is defined by the <b>character`s entrance</b>. Then and there it becomes the character of the said novel--packed with characteristics that suit the purpose of the plot and the vision of the author.

<i>How did this novel manage at that part?</i>
Well, let`s take a minor example.
Leona is walking with her sister/friend. It is the beginning of the book. No trace of St. Augustine`s reinterpretation. We are in stage one. We are wondering.
They are talking about marriage.
<quoteblock>
I’m waiting for someone handsome and good-smelling and smart. And I want a man who really loves me, not just somebody who’s looking for a drudge to cook his porridge and milk his goats.</quoteblock>
Charming, isn`t it?

<b>The disruptive element is one pear</b> that was thrown at them by some boys. Leona falls at some point. <b>But, the hero of the nation is there to save the princess, as</b>: <quoteblock>
Aurelius offered his hand to help me to my feet. I shook my hand out of his grasp.</quoteblock> (AURELIUS=SAINT AUGUSTINE)

<u>And look at us, emerging into the second stage</u>. All that we previously knew of Saint Augustine`s imagine has to be left at the door as we are made acquaintance with this new version.

The version that seems to go out of his way to mask himself as not creepy. He compares her with a fruit on the moment they lay eyes on each other. He hold a pear near her face and makes a comparison.
I do not blame the subjects of the said figure (the pear) but the comparison in itself. Why does he need to appraise his tag on her right out of the first time?

<b>WHAT IS WITH THE PEAR, and why do I keep bring it up?</b>

I did that, because it also appears in the form of a parabole in the the work written by the real life Saint Augustine. Look how was written down the moment in the [book:The Confessions|844091]: <quoteblock>“What I stole, I already had in abundance, and of much better quality too. I did not steal so as to enjoy the fruits of my crime, but rather to enjoy the theft itself, and the sin.
There was a pear tree in the orchard next tours, laden with pears, but not ones especially appealing either to the eye or the tongue.” p.36 </quoteblock>

But, after all, the voice that one author wants to employ in her retelling is purely at her latitude. Fine, but there are aspects that run deeper than the narrator`s voice, some that had to do with the logic of the placement in space and time.

At times, in all honesty, it felt as if I were in the <i>Flintstones</i>, but instead of the <i>stone age</i> i was welcomed by a capitalist society applied to the Roman empire`s time of glory

<quoteblock>THE NEXT MORNING I hurried toward the cloth shop where I worked, after leaving Numa at the café where she spent her day serving goat meat, watered wine, and flatbread.”</quoteblock>

So the equivalent would be a barista? And Leona is a seamstress?

The book tries to follow at great lengths the life of Augustine, as it was recorded. I would have liked a bit of flavor. I would have liked for the story not to be such a stickler to the original.

<b>Their love </b>

or <i>their pretense at affection</i> fell unconvincingly for me as he seemed besotted by her from the first glance. In a manner that it seemed purposely oriented towards the premise that there must be a love story (look at the title) and so, there should not be any more wasted time on paper wasted on a slow burn (but, how, i love a slow burn romance!!!). Instead, we get this:

<quoteblock>I was still angry with him. I longed to tell him to go sell himself at a slave market, but I carried his child. I hated myself for it, but I also carried a small hope for something from him; I didn’t know what.</quoteblock>

<quoteblock>“How do I look?” he asked me. “Like you should be the emperor,” I answered, and it was no exaggeration. To me, still, he looked like he should rule the world, with his firm gaze, his prominent nose, and his commanding height.</quoteblock>

To Leona`s credit, the character seemed to have some spunk from time to time. When the general atmosphere seemed to be boiling with tensions she occasionally erupted:

<quoteblock>‘allow’ me? Do you think I’m stupid?” I leaned toward him again, so that my face was right in front of his. “Listen to me. I will never agree to this. Never. I will not be married off to some ancient pig that your mother chose for me.</quoteblock>

In general there is no BIG conflict. There isn`t an arc, so to say. She is not build as a heroic character, but surely she leans towards a plot that would contain a spiritual journey.

A heroic character will be one that has to leave from a point, will have to pass several challenges, at the end of the road challenge the dragon, save the day and then, return home.
But that is not the case in here. There are several minor conflicts peppered around for which the reader is expected to get emotionally involved just because there are dramatic themes:

<b>E.G</b>1. She gets pregnant at a young age, before marriage
<b>E.G.</b>2. Aurelius wants to reach a higher function. That was perilous to their union as it meant that he had to marry another woman,
<b>E.G.</b>3. Their boy almost got trampled to death,
<b>E.G.</b>4. Vist to her mother in law. She does not want Leona and Aurelius married,
<b>E.G.</b>5. She returns to her family's home and finds out that her father is dead.

GOOD PARTS

But, there are also good parts that do need to be given credit. Like the theme in itself. That was the reason that I chose to read the book in the first place, because it speculated a story of one shadowed the night of historical oblivion.

The peace of the novel is not as slow as it is, in the case of books that try to encompass an entire human life. There are corners of bold description and dialogue that asks questions.

<quoteblock>He shrugged. “So why?” I persisted. “It was just something to do. My friends were doing it.</quoteblock>


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