08/08/2022
Seventeen-year-old Marie Antoinette arrives in 3070 Versailles, an empire on the verge of collapse—replete with android guards, state-run surveillance, and ubiquitous social media—in Dahlin’s intriguingly bizarre alternate history debut, a reimagining of the French Revolution. After a cataclysmic climate event wipes out half the world’s population, the remaining members of the 31st-century French ruling class take refuge at Versailles while citizens outside the palace suffer. Armed with her bejeweled holofone, socialite Marie and her shy, sensitive new husband Louis oppose the Third Estate, a faction of the French government that’s now responsible for brutal suppression of dissenting citizens through media censorship. Using Marie’s social cunning and Louis’s hacking skills, the teen rulers must find a way to maintain their power—or risk being ground down by surrounding Versailles nobility. While Dahlin occasionally struggles to balance this jam-packed novel’s many ingredients with its real-life historical context, resulting in thin present, past, and future parallels, the cast is theatrically rendered, and the increasingly wild extrapolations of the source material are innovative. The narrative’s dark, acerbic tone lends an effectively unnerving atmosphere to this frenetic combination of rococo aesthetics and modern social commentary. A completely singular read. Characters cue as white. Ages 13–up. (Aug.)
"Cake Eater's cyberpunk reimagining of Marie Antoinette whisks you into the dazzling neon-lit world of far future Versailles only to peel back layer after layer of unnerving truths. A bittersweet story about one girl's struggle against the tragic cycles of human greed and human history." — Xiran Jay Zhao, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Iron Widow
"With a love story for the ages, this vivid tale takes the history we know and recasts it into an exciting, technicolor, future world that challenges what we know here in the present, and how we know it. I loved it! I couldn't put it down!" — Beth Revis, New York Times bestselling author of the Across the Universe trilogy
"Viciously sharp, Cake Eater is part-mystery, part-thriller, and part rom-com. Biting and unflinching, Cake Eater is unlike any YA book I have ever read." — Lillie Lainoff, author of One for All
“The slow blossoming of the royal romance will break readers’ hearts… Intriguing and imaginative.” — Kirkus Reviews
“No history textbook is required to drop right into this colorful, fully realized world and fall for Marie and her love for her new husband, Louis… the witty banter jumps off the page and keeps readers engaged.” — School Library Journal
“[A] frenetic combination of rococo aesthetics and modern social commentary. A completely singular read.” — Publishers Weekly
"Viciously sharp, Cake Eater is part-mystery, part-thriller, and part rom-com. Biting and unflinching, Cake Eater is unlike any YA book I have ever read."
08/01/2022
Gr 9 Up—Marie Antoinette's tragic tale is catapulted into a tech-filled future—it's set in 3070—in this retelling that's full of apps, fashion trends, robots, and drama. Perfect for fans of the Sofia Coppola film, and the remixes and retellings on shelves now, this YA novel brings Marie Antoinette's to life through the often vapid, often painfully timely world of social media influencing, which as a royal in a turbulent kingdom on the edge, is often the protagonist's only chance to exert control. No history textbook is required to drop right into this colorful, fully realized world and fall for Marie and her love for her new husband, Louis, even as their relationship struggles with the foibles of young maybe-love. The world, while often hard to believe, is well-developed, and the witty banter jumps off the page and keeps readers engaged. VERDICT Add this to your YA collection and encourage history buffs looking for new fiction to take a chance on it.—Aryssa Damron
2022-05-10
Marie Antoinette, 1,000 years in the future.
It’s 3070. Seventeen-year-old Maria Antonia leaves the Austro Lands, where her mother is empress, to marry Louis-Auguste, dauphin of the Franc Kingdom and “a total mystery with almost zero social media presence” who may have sent her some anonymous texts. Due to a catastrophic climate-changing Event that killed half the world’s population, current humanity is mostly cut off from information about the past, but vestiges of former glory remain at Versailles, a crumbing ancient palace where the quickly married, newly Franc Marie Antoinette must navigate her shy new husband, an unfamiliar society, hidden turmoil, and social inequalities she was never taught to recognize, let alone address. Dahlin reimagines the French Revolution in all its complexity while sharpening the pace by compressing the timeline from years to months. The futuristic technology seems much like our own, but the parallels between the historic past and this future work well. The humanity of Dahlin’s characters, particularly Marie and Louis, shines, and the slow blossoming of the royal romance will break readers’ hearts. Even if they are not familiar with individuals such as the Princess de Lamballe or Robespierre, the characters are developed enough to feel like real people rather than just names from history. Cast members read as White by default.
Intriguing and imaginative. (Fiction. 12-18)
