The Prodigal Daughter

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I went into this book thinking it was going to be a usual historical-fiction book, something to do with the war or perhaps the suffragette movement. In all honesty, I don’t even think I read the blurb properly, I just saw my friend gave it 5 stars and recommended it to me, so I found it on Overdrive and borrowed it immediately.

At first I was slightly bored because the story seemed to just be about her father Abel’s life and his business, which I think might have been as a recap for the first book in this series so you don’t have to read the first book (although I would recommend that if you were planning on reading Kane and Abel to read that book first). But then the spotlight shifted to Florentyna.

When the spotlight switched to Florentyna, I was instantly intrigued. Honestly, if the whole book had just been about Florentyna’s uprbringing I probably would’ve still rated it highly. This is how good this book is and how much I enjoyed it. But it is so, so, so much more than that I’m left flabbergasted over here (why or perhaps why not you shouldn’t read too much about a book before you dive in). She is clearly a very bright and hard-working girl (which I immediately stan) and so I enjoyed watching as she grew up, and I liked how the author also included both her highs and her lows, because it made it more realistic and more interesting to watch her character development.

Her upbringing from newborn to past twenty takes up a good hundred or a hundred and a half or perhaps even two hundred pages, which I thoroughly enjoyed reading about, and then this book takes a turn for the amazing. The love story that the blurb talks about happens (the author doesn’t spend too much time on it which is something I appreciated) and then this is when the SMARTNESS of this book really kicks in.

This book isn’t just about a smart girl growing up (which on its own is still a really greta read). I think around a hundred or a hundred and fifty pages are then taken up by business, which I found really interesting. Then, although the author had previously hinted to this, I was still surprised when it turned into politics. Politics is something I’ve always been interested by, so this was also something I really enjoyed reading.

I loved Florentyna’s personality and her attitude. I loved her work ethic. I loved how she changed throughout the book and how we were shown step-by-step her progress from the bottom to the top (although technically she was already at the top). It’s a fascinating and (dare I say) thrilling tale, filled with witty remarks and conversations, dialogue that allows you to see the mind of (dare I say) genius and pure female badassery. I loved it all.