You realize how little control most people had over their lives. Hunt spent time on research and consideration of which names and even spelling of names to use for real-life figures, and also peppers in a lot of cultural notes including things like palace layouts, diets, the lives of eunuchs and concubines, and more. The historical tidbits were my favorite part of the book. I think the goal of the series is to humanize these characters to draw out their personhood and the drama of what they endured. The idea of the series is that generally when the Bible refers to beauty, the word used is more bland and chaste, but in some cases it’s more like “HAWT”. If you look up the book on Amazon or Goodreads you can see it’s in the three-part “Dangerous Beauty” series also featuring Delilah (of Samson fame) and Bathsheba (of David killing her husband and forcing her to become his wife fame – the Bible is wild). It seemed like an interesting mix of religious romance (think Hallmark), historical fiction, and a mashup of Jewish and Persian culture. This book was recently on one of the Amazon daily deals lists, so I bookmarked it for future reading and gave it a go.
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