By Mattie Lugar; Photo Credits to Mattie Lugar
“Moulin Rouge!” hands down has to be one of my all-time favorite musical movies that I’ve watched. It’s more the overall aesthetic of the movie that drew me in when I first watched it and when I learned that there was a book coming out inspired by “Moulin Rouge!” I was over the moon.
The premise of this book is essentially a mix of both “Moulin Rouge!” and Macbeth and while that may seem unconventional, I promise that it actually makes a great deal of sense. The country of Avon is in trouble as the rebellion known as the Uprising has overthrown Avon’s monarchs and thrown the country into political turmoil.
We follow Lady Caterine, who is a well-known courtesan at a popular nightclub, and Prince Callum, who is the son of a recently dethroned king, as the two try to navigate their lives in light of uncertainty. Again, I mostly picked this book up because I love “Moulin Rouge!” so much, but I was very interested in how Shakespeare would make a play throughout the book. I am currently taking a Shakespeare class and while we haven’t gotten to Macbeth yet, I’m sure after finishing the play I will get a better understanding of this book.
I’m going to be honest here, I really loved the premise of the book and the mixing of Shakespeare and other media, but this book simply just didn’t do it for me. The characters felt a little flat and one-dimensional, and the plot seemed to unravel itself as the book went on.
There were definitely plot points within the book that had me scratching my head a little bit, and I hate to say that the romance wasn’t my favorite. I simply think it’s because I don’t really like Callum at all and the way he treats people, especially women, in the book was not great. Something also to know about the book is that there are people known as the Gifted who each have their own special magical power, and Caterine happens to be Gifted which causes most of the conflict between herself and Callum. While Callum deeply mistrusts the Gifted, Caterine tries to get him to see that they aren’t horrible monsters, but it was like she was talking to a brick wall.
I wanted to love this book but unfortunately this was not one for me.