It’s about time someone took the princess story that’s normalized to girls and autopsy it with absolute precision ... not for the faint of heart; Bourland holds no punches with absolutely gruesome descriptions of medical trauma ... The stage is set for misery. Bourland reveals from the first handful of pages that Caroline is trapped at wit’s end on display as lover Finn’s gleaming jewel sequestered in the castle. Yet the writing is smart enough, the story good enough, to get swept away in their chemistry until reality comes crashing back ... Carefully crafted wordplay flits through the pages ... Descriptions fit for dreams or nightmares, vivid and evocative, capture how one’s environment can affect everything ... despite the narrator Caroline supposedly being uneducated, Bourland’s immense vocabulary still ekes through ... grips with the strength of an Olympian and holds it with the endurance of a marathoner. Bourland’s passionate storytelling transmogrifies into an insatiable urge to keep reading Caroline’s story even after its end — an ending that actually caught my breath, not once, but twice in quick succession.
This is not your grandma’s fairy tale ... Influenced by the struggles of real-life princesses, Bourland’s brilliant satire skewers the theatrics of power, excessive materialism and economic corruption.
Barbara Borland has been more than once in serious contention for major writing awards — an Edgar best novel finalist, a peer contest, among those — and her most recent novel, The Force of Such Beauty, is a case in point ... Turning upside down the typical girl-prince dichotomy, Caroline is certainly no passive princess in this thriller masquerading none-to-subtly as a deep introspective on our notions of privilege, station, womanhood and marriage. The messages are not lost, but enhanced in this haunting, smart satire.
With trademark style and sophistication Bourland plays with the tropes of the princess tales, true and not, that we know as well as our own names as she giftedly conjures Caroline’s glittering, threatening worlds. Despite danger everywhere, Caroline is the captivating narrator of her own story: a domestic drama, sparkling fairy tale, cautionary fable, and suspenseful mystery all laced into one.
The Force of Such Beauty depicts Lucomo and the Fieschi family's opulence in lavish detail, from the sumptuous fabrics to elaborate events ... Rich in emotion and luscious descriptions, The Force of Such Beauty is a careful dismantling of royalty that leaves readers wondering if any fairy tale is worth our desire.
Deliciously scandalous ... Though a plot involving the royals’ shady business practices feels anticlimactic, Bourland offers a smart critique of a corrupt world’s disenchanting effects on a naive young woman. The result is satisfyingly dark and twisted.
