This book should really be read before Mistress of Rome as it tells the back story of a lot of the characters. Absolutely phenomenal though, love the whole series. ( )

This book was amazing and so character-driven! It follows four women who are all relatives: Cornelia, Marcella, Lollia, and Diana. Each woman starts off pretty basic, and they each have their own quirks. Cornelia is the perfect matron, Marcella is the bookish one, Lollia is the giddy party girl, and Diana is the sportswoman. As the book progresses, they confront the changes around them, fight their own battles, grow apart and come back together. At the end, they've evolved like pokemon. Some people might have their favorites and say so-and-so wasn't likeable. For me, what's important is that Kate Quinn created realistic women determined to survive in this turbulent year of Roman history. While I don't agree with all of their choices, they're not me but their own people. I loved them all.

By the time you reach the end of the book and the end of year 69 AD, you and the Cornellii women have gone on a journey of growth, and it's the most incredible journey. On the way, you learn a lot about Roman life. While Mistress of Rome, the first book in the series, offered a detail portrait of gladiator life, Daughters of Rome showed a more generic look at how patricians lived. The other exciting thing is watching history unfold around these characters. Quinn did a fantastic job weaving historical figures in with creatures of her imagination. Everyone was believable and personable on some level.

Overall, extremely well done! I recommend readers start with this book instead of Mistress of Rome. A few characters overlap, but no spoilers are given. Seeing these cross-over characters gave me a warm feeling like seeing an old friend, and soon, all these characters will be old friends to readers. ( )

Not my genre but I quite enjoyed this book. I liked how it focused on the women, it really felt like an account of 69 through them. They aren’t there to support and love the men, they each try to live their lives despite men ordering them around.

Cornelia is a dutiful wife, hoping to give her husband a child and and making him emperor.
Marcella writes history, her terrible husband is not home anyway, and gets interested in whispering into important men’s ears to make history.
Lollia is the richest girl in Rome, but her grandfather was a freed slave and is looked down upon.
Diana is basically still a child at 16, brutally honest and obsessed with horse races.

Emperor after emperor dies, and these four cousins only have marriage to offer to the men on who their survival depends.
The family drama and survival made this book interesting, despite the modern words and phrases littered everywhere.
Knowing how the actual year of four emperors went, it made reading the drama a little ironic.

The romance felt meh sometimes. The relationships did not feel as well fleshed out as the relationship between the cousins and their family.
Lollia has a child while Cornelia desperately wants one, creating resentment. Marcella’s whispering causes trouble for everyone. Diana’s father is obsessed with sculpting and cares little for propriety. Lollia genuinely loves her grandfather and doesn’t want him to lose his status.

And why do these women call each other whores at every turn? It felt like the default insult.
They all have to bear what men want from them, whether they want it or not. They all try to be with men they actually like and then shame each other for it.
Lollia is called a whore for marrying new husbands every time, even though she HAS to be married to someone with connections to the emperor to her grandfather. She’s looked down upon because her grandfather was a slave even though they all want grandfathers money. Marcella is called a whore because Nero once demanded she sleep with him, never mind that she had no way to refuse him.
Diana and Lollia are scoffed at because the men they like aren’t rich romans.
For a book that was so strong when it came to centering women’s lives, it felt cheap to make them snap at each other like that. ( )

My housemates certainly knew I was enjoying this book as they kept giving me funny looks as I laughed at the situations the four women found themselves in. The story is about four patrician women living in Rome in the year 69BC when the Roman Empire went through four emperors in quick succession.

This book is light hearted and fun. There are many references to sex. However, I feel I can relate to the manner in which the four women talk about it. It feels like a 'girly' chat that happens regularly in my own living room with a pot of tea. It’s never too explicit. It’s fun.

I thought the beginning was weaker than the 'Mistress of Rome’ that had me from the first page. It wasn't really until the scene of Emperor Galba's death that I truly began to feel for the characters. This might have been because there were four main characters I had to learn to love. Despite this, it still only took me a couple of days to finish.

As to historical accuracy, I don't know enough about the time to comment. There was nothing, apart from the idea of red nail varnish, which stuck out as being odd.

This book was fun. I'm certainly going to be reading Kate Quinn's next book when it comes out.
( )

This one is more of a female romance novel. Hopefully the last two will turn around some from that overall plot line. ( )