The first several chapters of the novel are delightful and historically interesting. This covers Desiree's meeting the Buonapartes. From then on, the novel becomes a piece of sentimental, pretentious, boring schmalzy soap opera as Desiree has nothing to do but hang out on the periphery of Napoleon's court and act important and self-righteous. Her husband has an exceptionally successful career as a French marshall and eventually king of Sweden, but Desiree herself, at least in the novel, becomes progressively sillier and more neurotic. For example, she refuses to live with her husband (until she is in her forties) except in Paris (she doesn't like the clicking of spurs on the floors of palaces abroad, or palaces abroad are too cold for her, or have ghosts). She doesn't even attend her own husband's coronation. The whole thing is too silly for words.