Daughters of the Storm: A sweeping tale of freedom and betrayal, love and death, set in revolutionary France

By Elizabeth Buchan

Paris, 1789. As the shadow of the guillotine falls over a nation at war with itself, three very different women find themselves caught up in the storm of revolution...

In France under the last Bourbon king, the extravagance grows more outrageous and the unrest of the poor more dangerous. Into this ferment are swept the innocent English Sophie Luttrell, visiting France for the first time; the French aristocrat Héloise de Guinot, who hates the man her parents have arranged for her to marry; and Marie-Victoire, the loyal maid who finds herself immersed in revolutionary politics.

They are the daughters of the storm which is sweeping over France - and over the world. Three women whose lives will be forever marked by this turning point in history and whose passionate struggle for love, liberty - and for life - will have unexpected consequences.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Corvus
• Release date: Mar 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9781838955366

Reviews for Daughters of the Storm

[adonisguilfoyle · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Elizabeth Buchan's novel is far from a terrible take on the French Revolution, but having read a wide range of fiction and non-fiction on the subject, I require captivating characters or original storylines to break the historical monotony. Daughters of the Storm lacks both - and a good copy-editor. The facts are all there - the author has done her research (bar the odd anachronism, like 'feminist' and 'cologne') - but the fictional side lets the story down. The characters are straight out of a romance novel: pampered aristo Heloise, who is forced to marry a wicked Heyer-esque rake for her parent's convenience, but instead falls in love with a dashing soldier; English bluestocking Sophie, equally ill-matched on the marital front, who falls in love with an American spy; and representing the third estate, poor lady's maid Marie-Victoire, who is raped by a field hand then falls in love with a sans culottes. Heloise's husband is the strongest character - I would have liked to learn more about him - and Marie-Victoire's stalker the weakest of a cardboard cast. The reader has barely been introduced to this Mills and Boon collection of cliches, however, before we are asked to give a damn what happens to them when caught up in Paris during the Terror. I just couldn't muster the energy. The author missed a trick or two when trying to smuggle historical fact into a romantic novel, too - why not have William or Sophie write about the key events of the Revolution, instead of prefacing each section with a clunky italicised introduction? And why not write in the first person instead of switching back and forth between perspectives, often within the same paragraph, which was making me slightly dizzy? I can't help but feel that picking a couple of characters - Heloise or Sophie, William or de Choissy - and staying with them, might have drawn me into the story.I don't mind romances - the Baroness Orczy's Scarlet Pimpernel series introduced me to the French Revolution in the first place, and there are shades of both Orczy and Jean Plaidy in Buchan's writing - but this is both romance and Revolution by numbers. Great for readers who have never read about that period in French history before, but nothing new for F-Rev followers. Try Marge Piercy, Susanne Alleyn or Michelle de Kretser instead.