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A Library Reads Pick and Historical Novel Society Editor’s Choice!
A life in snapshots…
Grace knows what people see. She’s the Cinderella story. An icon of glamor and elegance frozen in dazzling Technicolor. The picture of perfection. The girl in white gloves.
A woman in living color…
But behind the lens, beyond the panoramic views of glistening Mediterranean azure, she knows the truth. The sacrifices it takes for an unappreciated girl from Philadelphia to defy her family and become the reigning queen of the screen. The heartbreaking reasons she trades Hollywood for a crown. The loneliness of being a princess in a fairy tale kingdom that is all too real.
Hardest of all for her adoring fans and loyal subjects to comprehend, is the harsh reality that to be the most envied woman in the world does not mean she is the happiest. Starved for affection and purpose, facing a labyrinth of romantic and social expectations with more twists and turns than Monaco’s infamous winding roads, Grace must find her own way to fulfillment. But what she risks—her art, her family, her marriage—she may never get back.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
February 25, 2020 -
Formats
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780451492098
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780451492098
- File size: 1303 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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January 1, 2020
Hollywood-royalty-turned-actual-royalty Grace Kelly is the subject of Maher's second novel (after The Kennedy Debutante, 2018). The narrative traces Kelly's life from her days as a young actress in New York, hungry for Broadway success, to her memorable turns in Hitchcock films and her Academy Award for The Country Girl (as well as her many discreet love affairs along the way), to her fairy tale wedding to Prince Rainier of Monaco in 1956, a marriage that ultimately leaves her feeling trapped and deeply unhappy. Kelly is a difficult subject for a novelist, given her public perception as an enigmatic ice queen, and Maher paints a portrait of a lonely woman desperate for the warmth of a loving family of her own and the stability this would offer, whose fixation on this fantasy leads her to trade a successful, fulfilling career for a dissatisfying marriage. Kelly still occasionally feels frustratingly inscrutable to the reader, but Maher's portrayal of this Hollywood icon is largely convincing, and there is much to relish about this well-researched, riveting tale.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)
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