Loved this book and can’t wait for the rest in the series! The characters come alive and they are easy to root for and keep you wanting to know what happens to them. Such an interesting and horrible time in history that doesn’t get written about enough, but is very engaging!

If you are looking for a historical novel that will sweep you away to another time and place, you need to read The City of Tears. This book is a masterpiece of storytelling that immerses you in the drama and turmoil of the Reformation, the Huguenots, and the French Wars of Religion. You will follow the characters you loved from the first book, The Burning Chambers, as they face new challenges, dangers, and passions in this thrilling sequel. You will not be able to put this book down, as you witness the epic events that shaped European history. And you will be eagerly awaiting the final book of the Burning Chambers trilogy, to find out how the story ends. Whether you are a fan of historical fiction, or you just love a good adventure, romance, and mystery, this book is for you.

Minou and Piet are enjoying a relative peaceful life. They are in the south of France. A marriage fostering peace between the Catholics and the Huguenots. Catherine Medici had great hopes that this union would offer peace during a very turbulent time.Minou is a valiant and resourceful character. She endures the unspeakable to endure the unrest, falsehoods and treacherous situation that was life in 16th century France. We are given an up close and personal look at a family in the run. It’s a must for French history fans.

I greatly enjoyed the first book in the Burning Chambers series, but for some reason I can't seem to get into The City of Tears. I think it's always a bit of a struggle when a book is chunky and you can't find your footing within the first few chapters, which is what happened for me here. Certainly one to revisit at a later date and an author I would easily recommend to fans of historical fiction!

I confess that I had never heard of Kate Mosse before choosing this book, and it wasn't until after selecting it and being approved for the ARC did I know that it was part of a series. It took me quite a while to read and review this one, because I had to start with The Burning Chambers, which is the first book in the series, and both books are certainly chunky!

I truly enjoyed this read! It is well crafted, interesting, and full of historical context. The characters had depth and soul and I really felt pulled back in time to join them in their world, struggling with the issues and hardships of the day. Even though they are long, after reading the first book I was still very curious about where the characters would go next, and this book did a fantastic job of answering. that. The City of Tears is a tale of family, first and foremost, and the true extent that people will go through to keep theirs together.

I did not realize that this book was part of a series. I have not read the first book, and did not review the second book.

Thank you.

This novel picks up ten years after Book Two. The writing of flawless and the setting of Paris came alive. However, I found the novel to be disjointed with random time jumps. Still, I recommend this for fans of Anne Fortier!

In a time when the world seems to be in upheavel I love that books allow us to journey to places far away. Covid-19 doesnt exist in these places. The City of Tears swept me away in the most magical of ways to a royal wedding in the year 1572 in Paris. Such rich immense storytelling that truly was when I needed it the most.

I received an advanced copy from the publisher via Netgalley for an honest review.

This was a wonderful continuation of The Burning Chambers that I quite enjoyed because so often we finish a large historical fiction novel and we don't really know what happens next. Oh boy did we get a LOT of what happens next with this novel! This novel covers a great many more years than the previous and, holy cow, with the twists and turns and parts where my jaw literally dropped open. I don't know what to say specifically about this novel as I don't want to give anything away, however, it was quite good and totally worth the read!

I did not finish - I have tried reading this book on multiple occasions and just could not get into it.

Starting 10 years after the events of book two, we follow Minou and her family to Paris for the royal wedding, and then through the subsequent massacres and political turmoil that lead them to Amsterdam.

Mosse is a great character writer, and also her descriptions of the time period make the setting a character on its own. I didn't quite enjoy this book as much as the first one, but it was still a great historical fiction/family saga.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review. I also accessed the audio version and found the narration to be really well done.

Thank you to the publishers, author and NetGalley for the free copy of this book.

I need more! This was all I could have hoped for and more. The imagery, the history, everything. You will not be disappointed if you give this series a try!

While I enjoyed The Burning Chambers, I found the City of Tears to be less compelling. There were multiple parts primarily separated by the passing of a number of years. After each time jump, the setting and the evolution of the relationships between the characters had to be reestablished. This slowed the progression of the story until another threat developed, usually another coup or assassination attempt. There were moments of true action and adventure during which I couldn’t put the book down. Unfortunately, they were interspersed with long passages of dull everyday life that I didn’t find compelling but were necessary to fill in the time jumps. Ultimately, I enjoyed parts of this book and not others. I definitely recommend that you read The Burning Chambers before this one.

The City of Tears is the second instalment in the sprawling five-book (The) Burning Chambers series and continues this stunning and enthralling historical fiction epic exploring the history of Huguenot refugees in Europe. It's a decade after the events in the first book and many things have changed. It's August, 1572, and Minou Joubert (aka Marguerite Reydon-Joubert, Châtelaine of Puiver) is now married to Piet Reydon, a Huguenot soldier and has birthed two children - seven year old Marta and toddler Jean-Jacques. The pair leave behind the serenity of Puivert in Languedoc and travel to Paris to celebrate the royal wedding of Charles IX’s sister, Catholic Marguerite de Valois, and Protestant Henry III of Navarre, the first Bourbon King of France, intended to bring peace to France after a decade of brutal and bloody religious war and unite the divided country. However, once there they become aware that Piet's friend turned enemy Vidal, who is now a Catholic cardinal is also in the city. Alongside the Duke of Guise and other renegade Catholics, Vidal is planning to strike when important Huguenot's are in town to witness the wedding. But predictably the violence spreads into what is now known as the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre in which thousands of Protestant Huguenots were slaughtered in the streets on the orders of the French king. In the chaos and desperation to escape Paris, young Marta disappears. In exile from France, they establish a new life in Amsterdam, but not knowing their daughters fate begins to impact their marriage considerably.

This is a compulsive, thrilling and richly described piece of escapism which explores France's darkest moments and moves at a fast pace with plenty of action and adventure alongside the more disturbing happenings. Not only does it tell us about the state of the country and secularism but it probes the topics of love and how families survive against the backdrop of war, displacement and tragedy but is ultimately a story about the most notorious engagement of the religious wars in France - the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre - when on the 24th August thousands of people were murdered, executed and tried to flee to safety. It all makes for a harrowing and heart thumping read and one you can tell has been extensively researched by a writer so passionate about this subject. It's exquisitely written and the backstories of the characters we've grown to either know and love or despise are given more depth throughout the narrative. Mosse brings to life the terrors and perils of the times and the nature of life within a country still fighting for its values with trauma and tragedy present around every corner. It's a thrilling tour de force from an inimitable author who can be relied to provide everything her readers desire and a narrative packed full of: thrills, danger, drama, emotion, action, tragedy and so much more. Undoubtedly, one of the finest writers of historical fiction today. This is a book I cannot recommend highly enough to those who've been loving this series as there is more of the same riveting plot lines here throughout. Simply superb.

I read Kate Mosse’s The Burning Chambers after I learned that The City of Tears was actually the second book in an ongoing series. And though I felt The Burning Chambers had its issues when it came to establishing the characters, setting, and story, I was eager to dive into The City of Tears to see what happened next to those characters I’d come to enjoy so thoroughly. And I did begin reading pretty soon after finishing the first book. About halfway through the novel, however, I hit a bit of a wall where my enjoyment of the characters themselves became too stalled in a combination of disappointment and boredom for me to do more than wade through the rest slowly. While I’m sure there will be more installments in this series, I doubt I’ll bother with them.

The City of Tears picks up where the epilogue of The Burning Chambers left off (after another prologue set far into the future). Minou must decide if she and the rest of their family are going to join her husband, Piet, in Paris over the summer to celebrate the marriage of Henri of Navarre to Marguerite de Valois, the sister of the King – a marriage designed to help unite the warring Hugenot and Catholic factions of France. But the specter of Vidal still looms from time to time and someone from Amsterdam has been trying to get in touch with Piet, though whether it has to do with the Protestant cause or the death of his mother, they aren’t sure. Ultimately choosing to go to Paris with their children, tragedy is in store for the Reydon-Joubert clan even before the horrors of the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre start to unfold.

My frustrations with The Burning Chambers began to turn around during the siege of Toulouse – when the action started to pick up. It was those descriptions of what was happening beyond just the personal worries of Minou and Piet – the larger picture of the growing Wars of Religion on everyday life in France – that captured my interest at a deeper level, that made me care about the characters themselves. I found the personal tensions between Piet and his former friend, Vidal, annoyingly melodramatic and the final showdown at Puivert was alright but not as interesting as the earlier glimpse of Toulouse. In The City of Tears, the larger picture is occasionally mentioned but largely glossed over in favor of more melodrama.

I had thought that the Bartholomew’s Day Massacre and its aftermath would feature heavily but after chapters and chapters of buildup, it’s over in a blink with the larger picture view mostly ignored and then there’s both a time jump of six years and a location change away from not just Paris, but France entirely. That was the wall that I hit while reading. Not only was there no larger picture except in the lip service of a summary of events, but even among the main characters the book skips over the immediate impact of that trauma. It picks up six years later essentially talking about how they’re still traumatized and struggling when it would have been more interesting to actually see those struggles and the tension it put on them as a family instead of just hearing about it from a safe distance.

So many times, as things were moving along and I thought I might be finding my emotional investment again, a twist came along that was clearly meant to be significant but all it really managed was to undermine the momentum or serve as a distraction from the fact that nothing much was actually happening. It was a relief when the novel reached its emotionally unsatisfying conclusion. As with the Massacre itself, there was so much buildup only for the emotional elements to be brushed over rather than given anything like breathing room. The drama for drama’s sake and focus on building suspense hollowed out what could have been a thoroughly engaging examination of both marriage and the relationship between parents and their children.

Thank you for the advanced copy of this book! I will be posting my review on social media, to include Instagram, Amazon, Goodreads, and Storygraph!

After the events detailed in the first installment, The Burning Chambers, it’s the year 1572, and Minou Joubert and Piet Reydon have been married for ten years. They have resided all that time at Puivert Castle, with their two children, and occasionally hosting family reunions with her father Bernard, her sister Alis, her brother Aimeric, and her aunt Salvadora.

A relative peace has been achieved in the First War of Religion between Catholics and Huguenots, but tensions still exist. That fragile peace will be put to test with the marriage alliance between the sister of King Charles IX, Marguerite of Valois, and her fiancé, Henri de Navarre; she is a Catholic, he a Huguenot. It is believed that the alliance may not hold since Marguerite is in love with Henri, Duke of Guise, but the marriage will proceed anyways, in the summer, to which all noble families in the land—Huguenots and Catholics alike—Minou’s included, have been invited.

Minou, Piet and their kids make the journey to Paris for the great event, which it is to take place near St. Bartholomew’s Day. The wedding is beautiful but not seamless. Even during the ceremony, it becomes evident that the alliance may not bring the much-promised peace. Henri, Duke of Guise, leader of the Catholic League, feels cast aside, his power much diminished in the new establishment. It is precisely that feeling that will ignite one of the most ignominious chapters in France’s War of Religions, forcing most Huguenots survivors into exile, Minou’s family included.

The events described in The City of Tears are fully planted in four distinct years, namely 1572, 1578, 1584, and 1592. After Minou and Piet’s family are forced into exile, they settle in Amsterdam, which is the city that lends its nickname to this novel. There, they witness the first events that ultimately will conclude with the independence of The Netherlands from the Spanish Empire.

More rooted in history—France’s, The Netherlands’, as well as Spain’s—than its predecessor, The City of Tears is still a little vague history-wise, but I was able to piece together who was whom and their role in the grand scheme of things by using Wikipedia when the narrative provided the titles of historical figures. That’s how I was able to discover how enmeshed the Huguenots were in the history of the countries they passed through in their quest for a religious haven.

Overall, this is a much more solid entry than The Burning Chambers in this saga of war, loss, and family in the 16th century, from a religious perspective. The characters have matured as losses have molded them, as would be in real life. The villains were still cartoonish in nature but, at least in the case of Vidal, better reasons are provided to justify his actions.

Disclaimer: I received from the publisher a free e-book via Netgalley in exchange for my honest review.

I am really enjoying this series so far. This installment did not disappoint. I appreciate all of the research that went into this writing and I have learned so much. That makes a great book.
Many thanks to St. Martin’s Press and to NetGalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publishing house and the author for the opportunity to read a complimentary advance reader copy of this book in return for a review based upon my honest opinion.

This is the second book in the Burning Chambers series, it’s a historical fiction book which takes place during the holy wars of France in the sixteenth century. It is a continuation from the first book, titled the Burning Chambers, but could easily be read as a standalone book, I believe.

I loved the first book in the series, I found this book a little slower to read and had a harder time getting into it. That being said, I enjoyed this book, it is richly written the characters very vivid and scenery easily pictured in my head. The main character, the same from the previous book, Minou was very likeable and I was eager to read about more about her, a woman who stands up for what she believes in in a time where that is definitely frowned upon. I also liked her husband, Piet, I liked seeing the continuation of their story. This book starts on 1572, when Minou and Piet are invited to a wedding in Paris that it is thought will unite the Catholics and the Huguenots. This book left me anxious to read the next book in the series.

Absolutely LOVE KATE MOSSE. I would have her on auto buy every time. She doesn't disappoint! Totally engrossing! As good if not better than The Burning Chambers-- I love the time period and also am glad the author has a running list of characters, which is helpful to refer back to... !! Such an amazing novel of European History...
Thank you NetGalley and publishers for this arc in exchange for my honest review.