The Second Marriage by Gill Paul
Genre: Historical fiction, Contemporary fiction, Fact with Fiction
Read: 18th June 2022
Published: 24th August 202
★★★★ 4 stars
DESCRIPTION:
JACKIE
When her first marriage ends in tragedy, Jackie Kennedy fears she’ll never love again. But all that changes when she encounters…
ARI
Successful and charming, Ari Onassis is a man who promises her the world. Yet soon after they marry, Jackie learns that his heart also belongs to another…
MARIA
A beautiful, famed singer, Maria Callas is in love with Jackie’s new husband – and she isn’t going to give up.
Little by little, Jackie and Maria’s lives begin to tangle in a dangerous web of secrets, scandal and lies. But with both women determined to make Ari theirs alone, the stakes are high. How far will they go for true love?
MY THOUGHTS:
An interesting tale of two women - Jackie Kennedy and Maria Callas - told alternately by them in the wake of the death of Jackie's first husband, John F. Kennedy. She takes comfort in the arms of Aristotle Onassis, one of the world's most wealthiest men. But hiding in the shadows is opera singer Maria Callas, who has been Ari's lover for years. And so the two women's lives intertwine around the man they both love.
Jackie Kennedy Onassis was one of the world's most glamourous and iconic women. And in her own way, Maria Callas was also, albeit dfficult. This book is a glimpse into the life of the rich and famous and how the other half lived.
Although it is a fictional account, it does combine fact with fiction through historical events that helped shaped the women's lives. The reader is drawn into their worlds and feels sympathy for the sadness and tragedy that has befallen them.
A truly different book than my usual choice but an interesting read all the same. I did not like Ari Onassis at all, as if his wealth gave him the right to be so entitled. A thoroughly unlikeable man. Of course I knew of him growing up, as well as Jackie Kennedy Onassis, but this historical tale sheds a certain light on their lives, even though fiction has been entwined with fact.
THE SECOND MARRIAGE is interesting as well as engaging although not entirely enjoyable. Not because of the story but the tragedy and sorrow two women bore from both their lives and that of Onassis himself. A thoroughly hateful character made him difficult to stomach at times.
I would like to thank #GillPaul, #NetGalley and #AvonBooks for an ARC of #TheSecondMarriage in exchange for an honest review.
MEET THE AUTHOR:
Gill’s novels include Another Woman’s Husband, The Secret Wife, about the romance between cavalry officer Dmitri Malama and Grand Duchess Tatiana, the second daughter of Russia’s last tsar, who first met in 1914, Women and Children First about a young steward who works on the Titanic and The Affair set in Rome in 1961–62 as Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton fell in love while making Cleopatra. No Place for a Lady is about two Victorian sisters who travel out to the Crimean War of 1854–56 and face challenges beyond anything they could have imagined.
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