The Force of Such Beauty: A Novel

After a failed attempt at escape, the princess of a tiny kingdom begins to reevaluate her life.

"Domestic drama, sparkling fairy tale, cautionary fable, and suspenseful mystery all laced into one." --Booklist, STARRED REVIEW
"Like if My Year of Rest and Relaxation was about Grace Kelly." --Molly Odintz, CrimeReads

Caroline, a former marathon runner who dropped out of school at fourteen to pursue an Olympic medal, was the perfect candidate for a tiara: shapely, disciplined, accustomed to public attention, and utterly uneducated.

After she meets Finn, the handsome prince of a small European kingdom, her fate is sealed. With a collar of pearls locked around her throat and a rope of diamonds leashing her to a balcony, Caroline uses her once-powerful body to smile, wave, and produce children with perfect grace.

But once she begins to open her eyes to the world around her--and examine her own reflection--Caroline discovers that she may have entered a bargain that cannot be undone.

Barbara Bourland's stunning third novel is her most ambitious and most imaginative book to date.  Inspired by accounts of real-life princesses who yearned to escape, and set in a grotesque and gaudy prerecession 2000s Europe, The Force of Such Beauty is a heart-wrenching and compulsively readable testament to the way in which real-life power structures around the world ultimately rest on the subjugation of women's bodies.