Cleopatra's shadows

This is an unusual take on a Cleopatra-era historical fiction about Ancient Egypt, in that Cleopatra herself barely features as a player in the drama. Instead, it concerns itself with the story of her older sister, Berenice, and younger sister, Arsinoe, during the brief reign of the former prior to the death of Cleopatra's father. I appreciated that it was a side of the story we rarely see considered, and it was written well enough to keep my attention and interest though wasn't more than solid-to-good

I'm clearly I the minority here but I just found this very dull. Clearly it was well researched but the endless references to ancient literature really didn't add anything. The idea of writing from 2 different perspectives was interesting but ultimately I felt that it just interfered with the pace of the story telling, not that there was much of a story to tell.