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I think I know what happened early in the development of this book. Jennifer Donnelly wanted to write an historical fiction of the French Revolution (probably after reading Fraser's biography of Marie Antoinette) but didn't trust YA readers to maintain interest. So she shoehorned in a Gossip Girls-style modern plotline. I guess she didn't realize that readers drawn to the Gossip Girls half wouldn't be interested in the historical plotline, and vice versa. As for me, I didn't care about either.

The modern protagonist, Andi, is one of the most unpleasant main characters I've read in a long, long time. By the end of the first chapter, I couldn't stand her. She never got better, or even bearable. I only persisted as long as I did to get at the French Revolution plotline. I'm a massive Francophile, with a special interest in the French Revolution. But the Revolution diary of Alex, the historical character, was dull. Alex herself was only barely more tolerable than Andi (which leaves us with two protagonists, neither of which I liked in the slightest) and the very exciting history of the Revolution was all too often reduced to dry facts. Would reading this book make somebody interested in doing their own research into the Revolution? Maybe for some, but not exactly a grand slam there.

Now, I said that I have a special interest in the Revolution already, and that's actually an understatement. So I'm going to go ahead and criticize the history. It is very, very difficult to research the French Revolution, because it seems like everybody who cares enough to write about it has a distinct bias, and there are many to choose from. It's important to try and balance your research to get an honest perspective. Not the case here. Donnelly consults Days of the French Revolution, which is a fantastic and nearly neutral book, but very basic and very general. She also uses both Carlyle and Schama's Citizens. Both have essentially the same bias, anti-Revolution. There's not much from the other side. Twelve Who Ruled would have been a fantastic balance, as well as being nearly indispensible in researching the Terror. And it does effect the book. Let's take a very simple example, from near the beginning: when describing the "lost dauphin", it's said that Robespierre (personally, apparently) was behind his incarceration. He was actually seperated from his mother at the order of the Committee of General Security, which Robespierre was never a member of and which was, eventually, in opposition to him. But everything bad that happened during the Revoltuion is Robespierre's fault, right? (Wrong.)

Ok, that may have been a little long-winded, but it's a subject I'm passionate about. There's one more thing I needed to complain about, but this will be much shorter. At the end of the book, Andi and her mother just throw their medications out the window, and I wanted to throw the book out the window. The attitude that you're weak and inferior if you need medications to deal with mental illness destroys lives. It infuriated me, more than anything else, to see the author flippantly throw that in at the end. It's more than just irresponsible. If I needed a last straw to hate this book, this would have done it.