Marsha's Reviews > The Time-Traveling Fashionista at the Palace of Marie Antoinette

Louise is in for another trip. She’s giddy to be taken on the annual school journey to France. But straitened circumstances at home destroy her chance.

Louise’s immaturity is on full display when she whines to her parents about her aborted trip to France. She understands in an abstract way that money is tight but she’s got a lawyer father and a mother who insists on wearing makeup and formal dress for dinner. She’s never really known hardship or privation. So she doesn’t react well when her plans are curtailed.

She’s got what I call First World Problems. Like a lot of privileged white girls, she doesn’t see much past the end of her own nose. In spite of her time spent on “The Titanic” (or perhaps because of it), she still yearns for a grand lifestyle and going to Paris was meant to be part of that. (Boo hoo, she can’t go to France. Big deal; there are children out there who can’t attend decent schools or have access to clean drinking water.)

Given the random jolts back in time Louise takes, where she’s often treated as an adult in high society, it can be hard to remember that she’s only twelve years old. She’s thrust into past times when women were expected to grow up quickly—especially a certain French queen who was forced to marry when she was only 14 years of age.

Louise’s trip to 18th-century Versailles is radiant with glorious dresses, bejeweled accessories and enough sweets to turn anybody diabetic. While the royals, nobles and aristocracy live the glamorous life, the peasants are starving and revolution is simmering.

Poor Louise! She knows vaguely that she may be in danger of losing her head but, thanks to her lack of attention in history class (again), she doesn’t quite remember when the revolution is supposed to occur. But she’s anxious to save Marie Antoinette as well as herself.

The story swings us through a decadent lifestyle, one that is rather startling for the young girl she is. Louise is exposed to a life of crazed excess and we wince with her as wine spills across tablecloths, pastries are crushed underfoot into the floor and grease stains the luxurious garments worn by the ladies. Men and women gamble with cards and dice and mistresses flirt with married men in full view of the court. This slice of high society is in stark contrast to the poverty, grime, stench and degradation that lies outside the castle and Louise is forced to the realization that some people have it far worse than she.

This sequel, like the previous one, is filled with gorgeous color spreads, mainly of women in fine dresses, with a two-page spread of the exterior of Versailles itself as a jaw-dropping entry. They are an absolute feast for the eye, especially the pale blue number that Louise first dons during the vintage sale. It is accentuated with what appear to be blue and white sparkles on the page, as if the dress itself were giving off aerations of light. You might not be keen on vintage fashion but it’s hard to deny how much like a princess she looks in that gown.

Her trip back to the present struck me as rather abrupt and jarring, with nothing really resolved. However, she and this reader came in for delightful shocks and raised issues I hope to encounter in the next book. I don’t usually care for book series. But I’m keen to learn just what happens next.