The Marriage Portrait

When a book starts with the following historical note “In 1560, fifteen-year-old Lucrezia left Florence to begin married life with Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara. Less than a year later she would be dead, rumoured that she had been murdered by her husband.” You know that you are in for a wild ride! I had really high expectations going into this book after just finishing ‘Hamnet' and falling in love with Maggie O'Farrell's writing. Her immaculate descriptions were again present, however, I found the pacing of this book to be much slower than her other work. I thoroughly enjoyed the story and loved the jumping timeline from past to present between chapters. Unfortunately, some of the chapter were over 100 pages and I personally felt were dragged out too much and not adding all that much to the story.