Book Blurb:
Paris, 1889: Amélie Audet toils in a laundry when, only steps away, investors promise the most glittering dance hall the city has ever seen. Determined to secure an audition, she stumbles into a meeting with the alluring owner of the Moulin Rouge and must face her scandalous past.

She would have Paris at her feet.
Jasper Degrailly is enchanted by a painting come to life. He sets out to seduce Amélie with his gilded world and the dark warrens of his mind. Yet he has his own sordid entanglements, and soon the gentleman and the singer must manage the greedy machinations of bohemian and high-society Paris.

He would have her at his.
Caught between competing artists, directors, and dance halls, Amélie struggles to earn the role that could make her a star, while Jasper strives to let go of his tortured past and hold on to his bright future. Eventually, their fates collide, and they find themselves torn between their desperate hearts and their irreconcilable lives.

My thoughts…

I enjoy historical fiction and this book certainly creates a vivid world of the late 1800s: the world of the female and society’s judgements and expectations. Of power, control, passion, troubles and hardships.
At the heart of this story is a talented woman, Amelie Audet, who dreams to become a performer. Her physical allure makes her into an unwilling muse and into the object of desire from more than one man. It is her relationship with Monsieur Jasper Degrailly that dominants the novel, as much as he wants to dominate her as their relationship becomes physical. His controlling need in their relationship is handled well, as is Amelie’s submissiveness.
There are two versions of this book available, one is the writer’s cut which does not hold back and contains explicit content with descriptions of bondage and consensual power exchanges. So, if you are looking for something milder then you can read the mainstream version.
I enjoyed the writer’s descriptions of 1880s Paris, the performance halls and the start of the Moulin Rouge and the less unsavoury side of life beyond Paris’s high society. The writer crafts a believable love story with a difference, and I really became invested in Amelie’s story.

Recommended for readers’ seeking a different kind of historical love story.