(I received a free copy of this book from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.)

The scandalous Australian woman who enchanted British society. Headstrong and beautiful, in 1905 Rosetta escaped her safe Melbourne life, deserting her respectable husband and five-year-old daughter to run away with Zeno the Magnificent, a half-Chinese fortune teller and seducer of souls. The pair reinvented themselves in London, where they beguiled European society and risked everything for a life of glamour and desire. Rosetta said she was American; Zeno claimed to be a brilliant Japanese professor. Together they attracted the patronage of famous writers, inventors and scientists, lords and ladies, dukes and duchesses. Empress Eugenie, the widow of Napoleon III, and Princess Charlotte, sister of Germany’s last Kaiser, were among their greatest devotees. Rosetta revelled in a life few women of her time would have dared to embrace, yet all the while she hid her secret shame: the daughter she had left behind. This is the compelling story of Alexandra Joel’s quest to uncover the truth about her scandalous great-grandmother, and the shocking century-old secret she would discover at the heart of her family.

Probably closer to 2.5 stars for one simple reason. This isn't truly a biography. It is a fictional account of the life of Rosetta. That doesn't mean to say it doesn't have its' highlights, just that it wasn't what I was expecting.

Rosetta was one heck of a woman - she lived a life that could only be described as "unconventional" and was an admirable woman. Her story definitely needed to be told - and read!

However, there are two things I took negatively from this: the author fictionalising dialogue and events to fit the known facts. That takes this book out of biography territory and into the "loosely based on the life of..." territory.
The other thing was that the author seemed to take on some of the issues of her grandmother (Billie was the daughter that Rosetta abandoned) and that seemed to cloud the narrative a little bit. Maybe Rosetta felt completely horrible about what happened with her daughter - maybe she just wasn't the parenting type - but for the narrative to take on the "How can a mother abandon her child?" angle was a bit much. But, then, the answers are as made up as a lot of this story...


Paul
ARH