And They Called It Camelot by Stephanie Marie Thornton
ARC from Netgalley and Berkley in exchange for an honest review.
Book Blurb:
Few of us can claim to be the authors of our fate. Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy knows no other choice. With the eyes of the world watching, Jackie uses her effortless charm and keen intelligence to carve a place for herself among the men of history and weave a fairy tale for the American people, embodying a senator’s wife, a devoted mother, a First Lady—a queen in her own right. But all reigns must come to an end. Once JFK travels to Dallas and the clock ticks down those thousand days of magic in Camelot, Jackie is forced to pick up the ruined fragments of her life and forge herself into a new identity that is all her own, that of an American legend.
My Review: 4.5 stars
And They Called It Camelot explores the life of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, widely considered an international icon of fashion and culture. And she was, but she was also a woman plagued with self-doubt and fears just as much as she was graceful and intelligent. Although this is a work of fiction, I feel like I learned so much about Jackie outside the First Lady we put on a pedestal. This novel definitely challenges the notions we have of who Jackie Kennedy actually was.
This book is historical fiction and although Thornton had to take liberties in writing, it often seemed as though I was reading a memoir. It can be difficult to write in first-person when the subject is somebody people think they know so well, but Thornton is thoroughly convincing. Jackie is contradictory. She’s portrayed as confident, complex, reserved and insecure, which makes her character so much more realistic. I found myself championing for her, crying with her and everything in between.
I don’t think I realized how much of a role Jackie had in creating the man that John F. Kennedy was before reading this novel. JFK was a flawed man, as we all are flawed people, but I loved getting to know him through Jackie. We saw him through her eyes and her heart and I felt as if I better understood their relationship coming out of this.
Revisiting this time in American history was bittersweet. This was an extremely well researched book and I found myself constantly putting the book down to Google images and events that were mentioned. Although you need to take this novel with a grain of salt, I felt it was an authentic take of Jackie’s story. I particularly loved that the novel extended beyond her relationship with JFK and into the aftermath of his death and how it shaped the rest of her life. Another well done book by Stephanie Thornton.
Quotes I liked:
This is a time for new beginnings, not endings. After all, Jack was only forty-six; there was still time to think of all that was yet to come. Plenty of time.”
“Choose one thing, Jackie, and do it well. The rest will take care of itself.”
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