Belle Révolte by Linsey Miller

Belle Révolte

by Linsey Miller

From the author of the Mask of Shadows duology comes this fast-paced YA fantasy, where two young women must trade lives, work together to stay alive, and end a war caused by magic and greed

Emilie des Marais is more at home holding scalpels than embroidery needles and is desperate to escape her noble roots to serve her country as a physician. But society dictates a noble lady cannot perform such gruesome work.

Annette Boucher, overlooked and overworked by her family, wants more from life than her humble beginnings and is desperate to be trained in magic. So when a strange noble girl offers Annette the chance of a lifetime, she accepts.

Emilie and Annette swap lives―Annette attends finishing school as a noble lady to be trained in the ways of divination, while Emilie enrolls to be a physician's assistant, using her natural magical talent to save lives.

But when their nation instigates a terrible war, Emilie and Annette come together to help the rebellion unearth the truth before it's too late.

Belle Révolte is "a welcome twist on the tropes of sword and sorcery novels" (School Library Journal), perfect for readers looking for:

  • tween and teen LGBTQ+ books
  • high fantasy with asexual and aromantic representation
  • lesbian and gay fairy tales
  • books with trans and non-binary characters

Reviewed by Ashley on

3 of 5 stars

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Actual rating: maybe 2.5 stars.

This book was... a little odd. I think the biggest problem is I didn't click with so many parts of it. The writing style felt oddly vague and slightly disjointed. I found myself rereading pieces over and over again because I was like, "Wait... what just happened?" or "...who is she talking to again?" I just lost track of what was even happening; I couldn't follow along very well for some reason. It was just hard to pay attention.

Everything was just okay. The main characters were okay; I wasn't super invested in either of them. The side characters were unmemorable; sometimes I forgot who was who. The magic was okay, and actually kind of confusing. I'm not sure I ever understood it, but after a certain point I could pretend I did. I wanted to like all the political stuff, but in the end I just couldn't bring myself to get super interested.

After a certain point I realized I wasn't loving the book. I didn't hate it, but I was "eh" about it. Normally I'd DNF because lately I just don't want to be reading books I don't love; I'd rather move on. But, my main motivation for reading this book was for the ace rep, and I hadn't even gotten there yet! View spoiler to see around when it finally shows up: 60-70% through! For about 2 seconds. Once I hit the ace rep, I skimmed the remainder of the book.

The best thing about this book was the chapter headings.

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Reading updates

  • 5 March, 2020: Started reading
  • 7 March, 2020: Finished reading
  • 7 March, 2020: Reviewed