I want to recommend new historical fiction about an American actress who married the Prince of Monaco. It was delightful:
Meet Me in Monaco: A Novel of Grace Kelly’s Royal Wedding by Hazel Gaynor and Heather Webb
Grace Kelly is attending the Cannes Film Festival in 1955 when she first meets Prince Rainer of Monaco. This story covers their awkward first meeting and builds to the royal wedding that captured the world’s attention while intertwining a secondary story about “normal” people who meet because of Kelly’s visit to Cannes.
The book reminded me a lot of another one I read recently about Queen Elizabeth’s wedding. Both of these books’ secondary plotline focused on an craft, in this case a perfumer, that played a role in the royal wedding. The book includes much allusion to scents and how they are tied to memories, and I did appreciate the lyrical beauty of this idea even though I don’t personally experience this or have that much passion for perfume.
And although I didn’t know anything about Grace Kelly before this book, like everyone else during the time period covered here, I am now entranced. The book opens with a publicity photo, and I kept turning back to look at it. She was truly stunning. The book does a good job of imagining what it must have been like for her to give up a career, leave her home country, and sail across the world to marry someone she couldn’t have known that well.
This is a lovely and entertaining read set in a beautiful and aromatic location.