{"id":364,"date":"2021-11-18T18:27:06","date_gmt":"2021-11-18T23:27:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/samiamreadingandreviewing.wordpress.com\/?p=364"},"modified":"2025-06-24T21:03:32","modified_gmt":"2025-06-24T21:03:32","slug":"hall-of-mirrors-roxanne-lalande","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/?p=364","title":{"rendered":"Hall of Mirrors – Roxanne Lalande"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Hall of Mirrors<\/em> takes place in the court of Versailles in the reign of King Louis. Lady-in-Waiting Mathilde and her lover Robin find a skeleton in the woods while adventuring, along with a strange pendant, and Mathilde is determined to find out why. When Robin\u2019s family becomes implicated, Mathilde turns to her friend Catherine, who in turn decides that they must tell both of their mistresses. When it appears that the mystery may encompass nobility as high up as the Chevalier, the mistresses and the ladies-in-waiting might be in more danger than they think. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t get as engrossed in this book as I\u2019d hoped; it did have a combination of mystery and romance, but neither were sufficient to pull me into the novel. The writing was good, and Lalande paints an appealing picture of the scenery around Versailles. However, the whole story felt like it was being told with a sepia tone, like I was very far removed from it as a reader. That isn\u2019t a tone that works very well for me, which is why I don\u2019t think I got as much out of the story as I could have. Of course, neither the story nor the characters were very deep, either, which is probably another reason why I didn\u2019t get very sucked in. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mathilde has a love interest, Catherine has a love interest, and even Mathilde\u2019s overweight mistress has one. In fact, the whole palace of Versailles seems to have one, which plays a significant role in the story. I found that all of these characters, as well as the political figures and intricacies, made the story difficult to follow at times. If, like me, you\u2019re more familiar with the English monarchy and notable figures, you might find this novel a little confusing as well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

With very little plot twists, transparent characters, and a less-intriguing mystery than I\u2019d hoped, I\u2019d say this book was average at best. It did read as a debut novel (it is Lalande\u2019s first fictional work) where the writing just isn\u2019t honed yet. I remember that I didn\u2019t like the first Ian Rutledge novel very much because Charles Todd just hadn\u2019t found their stride yet. I think with more practice, Lalande could become an enchanting storyteller in the court of the Sun King.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Roxanne Lalande\u2019s website can be found here: https:\/\/www.roxannelalande.com\/<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hall of Mirrors takes place in the court of Versailles in the reign of King Louis. Lady-in-Waiting Mathilde and her lover Robin find a skeleton in the woods while adventuring, along with a strange pendant, and Mathilde is determined to find out why. When Robin\u2019s family becomes implicated, Mathilde turns to her friend Catherine, whoContinue reading “Hall of Mirrors – Roxanne Lalande”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":367,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[52,137,165,169,217,287,344,349,398,440],"class_list":["post-364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-book-review","tag-france","tag-historical-mystery","tag-historical-romance","tag-king-louis","tag-mystery","tag-review","tag-romance","tag-sun-king","tag-versailles","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/hall-of-mirrors.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=364"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":636,"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364\/revisions\/636"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}