Well-written and the romance was impeccable. I loved how Michelle Moran incorporated romance into this tragic story of how Cleopatra's daughter was the only living survivor of her family and how she had normal thoughts like any other teenager. Cleopatra's Daughter was a splendid book and I very much enjoyed it. It is a book I like to reread every now and then.

So I love Michelle Moran as a writer. She just knows how to make you feel every emotion her character is feeling. I cried twice during this book and wanted to murder Octavian a couple of times to. The characters are all deep even the side characters are deep and make you feel. The detail in the book was exquisite too. I actually felt like I was in Rome and Alexandria. It was easy to imagine.

Selene Cleopatra's daughter is a strong-willed, beautiful, self-reliant, and a woman who has had a lot of tragedy in her life but still lives with a warm and generous heart towards others. Even those how took everything from her. Octavian is Augustus emperor of Rome and he conquered Alexandria and has brought Selene and her twin brother Alexander to Rome as prisoners. He does give them a home though. Octavia, Octavian's sister house, clothes, and treats the twins like her own children then there are Julia who becomes a sister to Selene and Macellus who at first she loves and then realizes that she only has a crush on him because he was the first guy to treat her well. Gallia is an awesome slave girl who becomes their best friend and Juba is their bodyguard and tries to help them as much as possible. Then there is the Red Eagle a rebel who is trying to free the slaves.

A lot of characters make this story and all of them has huge part in it. It was incredible and great. I recommend it. It was beautifully rendered.

When Cleopatra and Marc Antony are defeated by Octavian, their children are taken to Rome, where Octavian can make sure they don't become rallying points for those who might oppose his rule. Their daughter Selene is never happy in Rome and constantly looks for ways to win her family's way back home.

This book jumps right into the action as Octavian conquers Alexandria and thus Egypt. It grabbed my attention right away and held it until I finished.

I really enjoyed the way that Moran brought these historical figures from so long ago into such a vibrant reality for me. I even cared about (or hated, as the case may be) the minor people from history that I hadn't heard of before. Selene herself is just a great character. She's smart, strong, independent, loyal, free-thinking, and far from perfect. Who likes perfect characters anyway? She acts without thinking sometimes and gets herself in trouble. I did occasionally get confused by the names. There were Octavian/Octavia and Antonia/Tonia. In the author notes, Moran said she actually changed some of the names to make it less confusing. I guess Octavian and Octavia are so famous that she didn’t feel like she could change them, but I frequently had to stop and try to remember which one was the emperor and which one was his sister.

I know people got married younger and didn’t live half as long as we do now, but these kids felt entirely too old. Selene and Alexander are supposed to be 11-15 years old when this takes place, but they honestly felt about a decade older to me. Moran addressed this in her Afterword, saying that they had been so highly educated and trained to rule practically from birth that they would feel precocious to us. I can buy that. I would just get pulled out of the story frequently, thinking how no 11-year-old girl would be trying to think about how to regain her kingdom, or planning how she’s going to rebuild a city. It might be accurate, but it was hard for this modern reader to get past it.

I do wish that Moran hadn’t combined some human-rights acts into a fictional character called the Red Eagle. I really don’t read non-fiction, so historical fiction is how I get my history. I’m more likely to remember the Red Eagle than the fact that he wasn’t real.

I found this to be engrossing historical fiction about a fascinating period in time.

I found this book to be pretty repetitive and tedious both because of the writing and characterization of Cleopatra Selene.Perhaps I'm giving this book two stars because I previously read Stephanie Dray's trilogy about Selene, which was in my opinion more accurate and interesting. Nevertheless my low rating was also based on the intermittent explanations of Roman and Egyptian culture. I understand the author wants the readers to get a better sense of their traditions however I have to agree with some of the previous reviewers here that this book read like it was aimed more at teenage readers.