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His Last Duchess Gabrielle Kimm #inbetweeny

Minor confusion at the start of this book as I inadvertently mistook Lucrezia Borgia for Lucrezia de Medici and I couldn't understand when I began reading as to why Lucrezia's father was not the Pope. A quick reference to my book shelf later corrected my error and away I went with de Medici who was most definitely not a Popes daughter and was about to get married to the Duke of Ferrara.

Now I'm no prude, I have read 50 Shades of Gray as one of the groups books of the month and believe sex does have a place in books (Sarah Waters being an excellent example) however take out anything to do with sex in His Last Duchess and you have nothing left, even 50 Shades had a crazed man out for revenge sub story to keep us going inbetween.

It wasn't even a 50 Shades esque book whereby its the sex that sells it. Kimm goes in to detail at the end of the book as to how it was inspired by a Robert Browning poem and was based on a real life story. However in this 'real life' story all anyone did, all anyone thought about and all anyone was driven by was sex, it was boring.

We were told time and time again how Lucrezia wasn't typically pretty, yet her cousin, her husband, the painter and seemingly anyone who came into contact with her wanted to sleep with her.

Poor Chiara's character was shoe horned in to the story and often forgotten about until convenient moments yet even she had a sex scene. Oh and by the way when does rigor mortis fit in?

Lucrezia's 'demise' was ridiculous with the ending too sugary sweet. I wish Kimm had explored the fascinating character of Ferrara however we were left with his 'busy mind' and his 'unopened door' instead. Francesca was surprisingly quite likeable yet as a prostitute nearly every one of her scenes referenced Ferrara's exotic tastes in the bedroom. Kimm's next book does centre around Francesca and her life as a courtesan and reading inbetween the lines does seem to heavily feature sex yet again.
A real life character with a Browning poem to boot had buckets of potential but unfortunately it never got off the ground (or should that be out of the bedroom?)



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