Review: The Hamilton Affair

The Hamilton Affair by Elizabeth Cobbs
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is for fans of Hamilton-the-Musical or a solid historical narrative focusing on female characters or historical romance. It's all of those things. The author worked on this when Hamilton was still a lesser known founding father instead of an award winning musical. There is some remarkable overlap in specific lines, but this is because they both used the same primary sources! You'll find some of the same content in Lafayette in the Somewhat United States, and, I imagine, Alexander Hamilton. Good research will find the same information. Just to get that out of the way, as some reviews have said something like, "She ripped off Hamilton!"

It reminds me of the book Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, where Elizabeth Gilbert explains where ideas come from and how sometimes they occur simultaneously. An amazing phenomenon, displayed here.

Of course the focus is different here. There is more time spent on the childhoods of Alexander and Eliza, and the author spent time in the West Indies while she researched. And while politics are still in the story, the focus is more on the relationships. I feel like I also learned more about the Schuyler family and Eliza's time as a daughter, sister, wife, and widow.

The narrator, Coleen Marlo, grew on me. At first she'd end sentences with a whisper and while I don't believe she is the same narrator who I complained about before who did the same thing, it is a personal dislike of mine. Either she stopped doing it or I got used to her because after I got into the story itself, it stopped sticking out to me.

I received an audio review copy of this book from Brilliance Audio, in exchange for an honest review.

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