Creole Princess

From the publisher:
All along the eastern seaboard, the American struggle for independence rages. In the British-held southern port of Mobile, Alabama, the conflict brewing is quieter--though no less deadly. The lovely Frenchwoman Lyse Lanier is best friends with the daughter of the British commander. Rafael Gonzalez is a charming young Spanish merchant with a secret mission and a shipment of gold to support General Washington. As their paths cross and their destinies become increasingly tangled, Lyse and Rafael must decide where their true loyalties lie--and somehow keep Lyse's family from being executed as traitors to the British Crown.

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This book is the second of Beth White's Gulf Coast Chronicle books.  I have not read the first one but you do not need to read it to be able to enjoy this book.  However, there are quite a few characters in this book so it might make it slightly easier to read the other book first.

The story is told mostly from Lyse and Rafael's view points, but it is also told from multiple other's as well.  This adds some dimension to the book, but I felt that there were too many "pots in the fire." Because there were so many stories going on, I felt that I never was able to really invest in any of the particular story lines.  The writer would give a lot of detail and build up one story and then suddenly drop it off and pick up with someone else's story.  In doing this I felt there were also a lot of loose ends.  The story concluded with Rafael and Lyse's story, but left the other stories unresolved.  The reader could summarize what would happen but it felt incomplete.

It is not a bad book, I just felt that it wasn't able to focus on one or even two stories and really invest in those.

I did learn more about the history of that time, but even that was scattered and told over a many different jumps in time so that too felt like I didn't really care about what was happening because it felt disjointed.

I received this book free from Revell Reads in exchange for my honest review.