Caz's Reviews > The Ambassador's Daughter

2.5 stars

I tend to prefer to read historical fiction set before the twentieth century, but as I’m very interested in the events of the First World War, I was intrigued by the premise of this story, which takes place in 1919, shortly after the armistice.

Professor Rosenthal is a respected academic who has been asked to attend the peace negotiations in Versailles. His daughter, twenty-year-old Margot, accompanies him; principally because she does not want to go home to Berlin where her wounded fiancé awaits her.

While I did come to enjoy the book, I have to admit that it was hard going for the first 50 or 60 pages. The narration is first person in the present tense, which is not a favourite with me; I frequently find it limiting and in this case, as Margot is quite a solitary person, there is a lot of description and not much happening. The story begins to pick up shortly thereafter as Margot becomes acquainted with Krysia, a Polish musician who encourages her to think about who she is and what she wants - and Captain Georg Richwalder, the young German naval officer who gives her a job.

Jenoff does a good job in creating the atmosphere of post-war Paris, but I had hoped there would be a little more historical insight especially about the drawing up of the famous treaty and its likely effects. The latter half of the book concentrates far more on Margot’s burgeoning yet impossible romance with Georg and the untangling of the web of deceit which surrounds her and her father.

Margot is very naïve and frequently seemed to be drifting from one mistake to the next without asserting any control over her life. She has allowed herself to become engaged to a man she has known since childhood but does not love mostly because she feared the disappointment she would cause to others by saying ‘no’. When she finds real love with Georg, she is too weak to break off her engagement (although as it turns out, it’s more complicated than that). Because of a careless word in the wrong place, she opens herself up to blackmail by what she believes to be a Communist group that wants her to pass on the information she is able to acquire about the German military through her work with Georg.

There are a lot of different plot strands weaving in and out, but none of them are fully explored or developed. We discover that Margot’s father has deceived her about her mother; her friend Krysta also deceives her; Margot lies to Stefan and to Georg; there is the fact that Margot is Jewish, yet by the end of the book Georg is beginning to sympathise more and more with the National Socialists. To have dealt with all these strands satisfactorily would perhaps have required a longer book; or that the author had tried to cram less into this one.

There were a lot of anachronisms, too. For instance, there is a reference to women having stopped wearing crinolines ‘recently’ and to ambulances having ‘sirens’ (surely they would have had bells?) There are a lot of expressions that feel too modern and those oft-used Americanisms, “fall” and “sidewalk”. Then there is the fact that Georg, while suffering from pneumonia is up and about a mere couple of days after being taken to hospital, and Margot’s father is sent home a few days after having had a heart attack.

There was a good book in here somewhere – but sadly, I don’t think this was it. There was real potential in the story and in the premise – especially given that the central characters were German and having to deal with the way they were perceived after the war, with how their world was changing and with the terrible problems of poverty and anarchy that were rife throughout their country. There was a thread touching on Margot’s identity as a Jew and her discomfort with the move towards assimilation being taken by some members of her family, but that was never fully worked through either.

Having said all that, however, I didn’t hate the book. I dislike the wasted potential, but even though the story was rather creaky in places I found myself enjoying it and able to roll my eyes at the anachronisms and clichés and then carry on reading.

By the end of the story, Margot is finally beginning to stand on her own, and the book leaves things open – will she return to Germany and to Georg or will she make a life for herself elsewhere without him?

Overall then, I have mixed feelings about this book. Would I recommend it? If you’re looking for a fairly quick read set in a time period which is not often featured in romantic HF and are in a forgiving mood, then yes. But if you want something that is meatier when it comes to the historical detail, then this is perhaps not the book for you.

With thanks to Harlequin/Mira and NetGalley for the review copy.