The Exchange of Princesses: A Novel

This is a fascinating book written by an author with a distinctive voice. She is French and only a few of her books have been translated into English. This is history about women's lives on a very personal level. If you love getting into the day to day, and avoiding dates and battles, give her a try. She also wrote an amazing book about Marie Antoinette. I have always been fascinated with Spanish nobility and it's hard to find anything readable that isn't about war etc.

I thought this book was fascinating. If you are looking for something a bit more sophisticated than books like the Other Boylin Girl but still quite engrossing, I would highly recommend. The attention to detail and adherence to historical fact made it much more interesting than those pseudo histories. I love the use of present tense. ..a really creative, bold choice. The author is witty and sarcastic, which was a real strength. (You do have to wonder about the obsession with hunting on the party of the royalty!) I would love to hear the author interviewed about liberties she took or did not take in order to tell this story. A really great read. The last series of books I read that were comparable were the three part Josephine series.

Loved the insight of what it was like from a child and adult view, children were really at a disadvantage, it was really sad actually. The end felt a bit rushed, but loved the story

Very glad this book has been translated!!

It was not what I expected. Something between pure biography and fiction. Dry..Very well researched. Full of interesting historical facts/politics I did not know about these two children and the world they lived in. But the story was hard to read and I could never really get interested in the characters. Because it wasn't presented as pure biography, I had a hard time with the authors assumptions of what the principles were thinking. I can't recommend it.

I loved this book. I had never read anything on these two princesses, so it was delight to me.

Entertaining read.

Haunting and brutally honest. I have been a voracious reader for more than 50 years, yet, still I am amazed when I read a book such as this. What talent or gift this author has in combining original letters with historical research into such perfection.

I like reading French and Spanish history and, thus, this book seemed a good choice. It’s very confusingly and poorly written — may in part be due to translation. One must know much about the Seven Year War of Succession to understand what’s going on and, even at that, requires considerable Googling to understand. There are less confusing reads.

I had expected more historical/accurate facts even though this is a novel. It's written by a historian and I was disappointed by the amount of "supposed" information such as the thoughts of the people involved. These episodes somehow didn't ring true and slowed down the story. However, the stories of the 4 children involved are interesting and I will watch the film when it's on TV ...

Not to my taste. I did not enjoy this book at all. I felt like I had wasted my money.