- Do you want to read a book about a fake band and the reasons they broke up? - ... no ... why would I? - it's written in the style of a non-fiction boo- Do you want to read a book about a fake band and the reasons they broke up? - ... no ... why would I? - it's written in the style of a non-fiction book, with "interviews" with each band-member (and people close to them) - that is actually a really cool idea - In the audiobook each person gets their own narrator - I'm listening … actually listening. To the audiobook.
This book was really fun and audio is probably the best way to experience it because, well, the character-voices do all sound very similar (which makes sense in context because most of them are 20-somethings from the 60s LA music scene, it would be odd if they did all sound different). But if they all have a different voice in the audiobook, it's much easier to distinguish them, and it really adds to the experience....more
The plot had potential: Lydia and Gabriel were childhood friends. More than that: Before he left for diplomatic service, he asked her to wait for his The plot had potential: Lydia and Gabriel were childhood friends. More than that: Before he left for diplomatic service, he asked her to wait for his return and promised to propose to her then. Only his stint in the diplomatic service involuntarily turns into a career as spy and assassin for her majesty's government, and now he feels unworthy of Lydia. (OK, and instead of just writing her a "please forget me" letter he ghosts her, but we do not read romance novels for protagonists who make reasonable and intelligent decisions, so I could have forgiven that). But fate throws them together again...and you never guess what happens then!
Now, this could have been good, if it had seriously dealt with Gabriel's PTSD/general fucked-up-ness after what he had experienced and Lydia's reaction to the fact that Gabriel broke his promise to her, left her an old maid and even completely ignored her upon his return, but it didn't. Instead, everything is drowned in the most melodramatic purple prose imaginable. I mean
But all were trivial inconveniences compared to the thing that irked him most: smiling. Damn, but Gabriel loathed smiling.
Yes. That is an actual sentence from the book. I know I just made the "Edward Cullen called and told you to cheer up" joke but seriously? I am expected to take a character serious who whines about having to smile?
And who has monologues that sound like they are lifted from teenage emo poetry?
Gabriel's heart had flared to life, wakened by the taste of her, the sensation of her lips on his. It was if he'd been in purgatory, a ghost of flesh and blood. He wandered through the world, but was dead in every way that mattered.
Not that Lydia is any better:
So she had forged her own protections. Gabriel wanted to shut her out? Very well, let the battle commence. Her heart would guard itself with something more impenetrable than timber; Lydia would smelt it from iron, so he'd never hurt her again. Reinforce that barrier with iron, day by day, year by year. Nobody would know her heart had never healed.
The kissing-scenes, meanwhile, made me long for the simple days of tongues battling for dominance.
She was a battalion meeting his enemy siege. Their lips met like duelling swords, every touch becoming a battleground.
And in-between all of that...I missed any of them seriously dealing with their emotions about the past. There's melodramatic whining, duelling lips then a misunderstanding/Gabriel fucks things up by saying the wrong thing/the B-plot makes a sudden appearance and has to be dealt with, and then it's back to the monologuing but both are so horny that they rather jump each other instead of having a conversation like adults. Rinse repeat. I just fully expect that they will continue this cycle and if they have a disagreement about the curtain colour, both will see it as proof that the other one doesn't love them any more and there will be more melodramatic monologuing....more
Robin ist ein horse girl (gender neutral) mit telepathischer Verbindung zu Pferden und kann und weiß eigentlich auch sonst alles (besser). Sein großerRobin ist ein horse girl (gender neutral) mit telepathischer Verbindung zu Pferden und kann und weiß eigentlich auch sonst alles (besser). Sein großer Fehler ist, dass er einfach zu ehrlich ist und auch hochrangigen Personen immer die Meinung sagt. Aber das geht meistens trotzdem gut, weil tief drin irgendwie jeder schon genau das sagen wollte, und dann hält doch irgendjemand die schützende Hand über ihn.
Derweil sterben und leiden um ihn herum die Frauen und dann ist Robin auch ganz traurig, weil eine vergewaltigte Frau alleine ist einfach nicht schrecklich genug. Aber wenn die vergewaltigte Frau Robin etwas bedeutet und er deswegen leidet...das ist dann so wirklich schlimm. (But it's OK. Die Frauen ertragen ihr Leiden größtenteils stoisch und heiligengleich. Da können wir uns dann auch ganz darauf konzentrieren, wie sehr der arme Mann leidet).
Aber, ich muss ehrlich zugeben, dass mich auch das nicht so wirklich mitgenommen hat, weil sowieso alle Charaktere - Robin, die Frauen, seine Freunde und ganz besonders seine Gegenspieler - alle die Tiefe einer sehr billigen Postkarte haben und mir deswegen auch egal war, was mit ihnen passiert....more
Really, I have only one complaint about this book, and that's the fact that there are too many bugs in it for a borderline entomophobic person like meReally, I have only one complaint about this book, and that's the fact that there are too many bugs in it for a borderline entomophobic person like me. It's great that the characters consider it incredibly romantic to look at bugs together, but couldn't they have bonded over any other hobby?
But you know, apart from that: the story is fun (when there aren't any bugs), the main characters are delightful (when they don't talk about bugs), the supporting characters are great fun (and they don't talk about bugs anyway) and the bullies are all horrible, which makes it incredibly satisfying when they get their comeuppance (without any bugs). ...more
My own relation to religion is complicated, but that doesn't stop me from enjoying stories about characters that are religious, and relating to them. My own relation to religion is complicated, but that doesn't stop me from enjoying stories about characters that are religious, and relating to them. If they are well-written. Which this book is not. Spencer's struggles with his faith just don't feel convincing because when he talks about them, he sounds like an alien who only has a rough idea what human emotions are.
My own world, so stilted, so formal, so subsumed by an almost desperate need to be seen as reserved, felt like so many shades of grey beside Donald's world of vibrant colors and mercurial emotions. Was I so much a creature of the grey world that I couldn't indulge in—well, in indulgence?
Yes. Your own world is indeed very stilted. So stilted that I really don't care about it.
And when he's not struggling with his faith in a totally natural and relatable way, he's interpreting plays. No, seriously. Pages of this book read like excerpts from term papers on Equus and Sleuth. I mean, I have discovered some interesting books because they were mentioned in other books, but those didn't read like the author thought it was a shame that all the work they did for a uni-course would only catch dust in a storeroom somewhere.
The character Alan Strang seems to have had a passionate (in every sense of the word) relationship with horses and with Jesus. With God. With God as Equus. If that sounds confusing, well... Strang was confused. And he seems to have confused the hell out of his psychiatrist, Martin Dysart, who was thrown into confusion about his own role in life and his own relationship with religion in general and God in particular. Dysart had questions like, could religious passion be good? If not, was it the fault of religion or the religious? Could Dysart lead young Strang out of the darkness of his twisted creed and into the light?
Who cares? Not me.
"He saw Equus as a God figure, and yet he came all over it. Does that strike you as depraved?"
It mostly strikes me as dull, for I did not pick up this book because I wanted to find out what the author thought about some random play.
But there's not only literature class coursework. There's also bible study discussion questions:
What I wanted to believe, based on those verses from Matthew, was that my feelings for Donald were like a window into the incomprehensibly massive Presence that is God. Isn't that why God came to us as Jesus? So that humans, with our limited capacities, could have a personal aspect of God to relate to?
There is actually a good question hiding behind the verbatiousness that would make Cat Valente yell "Stop please! You're overdoing it!" but I was rolling my eyes too hard at the phrasing to care.
And the whole book is like that. Very little plot, a lot of characters sounding like the mouthpiece of the author who is imparting her wisdom about faith and English literature.
And of course there's this sentence:
I felt my erection as it tried to escape from the captivity of my jeans, of my inhibitions, of my fears and of my father's disdain.
I really could have spared myself and you this whole review and just quoted this sentence. It tells you everything you need to know about this book....more
I read this book in very few sittings...with long breaks inbetween. Because once I started reading I was hooked. The gothic atmosphere was beautifullyI read this book in very few sittings...with long breaks inbetween. Because once I started reading I was hooked. The gothic atmosphere was beautifully described and the two main characters were very very likeable. But as soon as I put the book down again I felt little desire to pick it up again because it wasn't like there were any cliffhangers or just interesting questions that the plot posed. The plot was mainly "They live in a house that's creepy" and of course, the question (for the reader) is "Why is this house creepy?" but neither of the MCs makes much of an effort to find it out. At no point are any revelations that made me go "Wow! I wonder how they'll deal with that!" (There are some arguments but the plot takes place over quite a long time span, so there's argument - time jump - we hadn't really talked for two months and that was just not enough to keep me want to return). ...more
The current Amazon title of this book is not Tsarina but Tsarina: ‘Makes Game of Thrones look like a nursery rhyme’ - Daisy Goodwin. Apart from being The current Amazon title of this book is not Tsarina but Tsarina: ‘Makes Game of Thrones look like a nursery rhyme’ - Daisy Goodwin. Apart from being cringy, it also reminded me that A Song of Ice and Fire did many things but it has at least never had graphic on-page descriptions of POV characters getting raped. The books at least. The show had no such qualms. And neither has Tsarina. Marta/Catherine gets raped multiple times. She also witnesses rapes and eventually orders the rape of another character (and watches). In case you hadn’t guessed: this book is Dark And Gritty. But there’s not only rape, there’s also sex...Katharina has sex and watches other people have sex. Occasionally the sex is fairly plain and vanilla but more often it’s something like...orgies involving lesbian incest sex because this book is Dark And Edgy. In between, there are some wars that are described with as much loving detail as only an author who absolutely does not care about this kind of stuff and wants to go back to writing edgy sex could. Which would be slightly excusable if the sex scenes didn’t look like this:
Peter whooped and grabbed the man’s hips, spurring him on. “Devier, you rascal. Do I have to teach you everything? Don’t they even know how to fuck in your country? Rhythm, man!” Rasia Menshikova covered her face in shame when Peter fondled her tiny breasts, pushing them to the right and then left. “Starboard! Larboard! All hands on deck,” he shouted.
At least there’s also lovingly described torture and execution (because this book is Dark And Edgy) that give a break from sex scenes involving naval terminology.
What else? - Obergshathalter is not a German word - матка/matka is a Russian word but not the one the author thinks it is - Catherine magically gains the ability to read so she can burn a letter from Peter in a fittingly theatralic manner (so that the right words burn first) and then forgets it again - I am aware that Russian-Orthodox people cross themselves with three fingers, some people might not but they will probably catch it after...idk the third time it’s brought up. There’s no need to mention the three fingers every time someone crosses themself (yes...this was genuinely mentioned so many times that I got as annoyed by it as by the bad sex scenes)
I could go on but it would just be several more points followed by (because this book is Dark And Gritty you see) and I have better things to do. ...more
This book just didn't work for me. One reason was that I couldn't really buy the romance: Harriet goes to a speakeasy gay bar and hears Rosalie singinThis book just didn't work for me. One reason was that I couldn't really buy the romance: Harriet goes to a speakeasy gay bar and hears Rosalie singing. They exchange a few sentences and the next time they go there Rosalie has already written an entire song about her and after that Harriet's heart aches when she thinks about Rosalie and that she can't be with her, because her family expects her to marry.
That brings me to the second reason the story didn't work: I also couldn't really buy the conflict. Because Harriet's family knows she's lesbian and doesn't judge her for it. They still want her to marry because a single woman would be eyed suspiciously and if she is then also frequently seen with another single woman that would cause such a huge scandal that it would dishonour her cow entire family, and would even ruin the marriage prospect of her nieces and nephews. Because it's not like something happened shortly before the 1920s that seriously decimated the number of young men, no famously there were a shitton of surplus men in that time and if any woman couldn't find one there had to be something seriously wrong with her.
So Harriet keeps talking about her loving family who only wants her to get married for her own good and all the fault is with the evil society that makes her hide her true self and would make her face horrible consequences if it came out. Now that's true in theory...but also Harriet drags her prospective fiancee in the mixed-race speakeasy gay bar because she just has a feeling that he would be fine with it so it doesn't really feel as if she is actually that worried about consequences. (And why would she when even her stuffy conservative aunt goes "Get that hot lady singer's ass before you get married because nothing a lady does before her wedding should matter"). So the conflict/danger/tension/however you want to call it never feels present. Harriet is surrounded by people with fairly progressive views - which itself isn't bad because not every historical novel featuring queer characters needs to cause tension with "my loved ones would despise me if they found out who I really am" but...then it needs a different conflict because people in pretty dresses standing around isn't a story. But that's how this book felt....more
I have put off this review for quite a while now because I just don't know how to put my feelings into words. I did like this book but there were alsoI have put off this review for quite a while now because I just don't know how to put my feelings into words. I did like this book but there were also things that just didn't quite work for me. The Wife in the Attic is a story in the tradition of Gothic Novels. Spooky houses, dark secrets...almost every chapter ends with the heroine being shocked by something and half of those cliff-hangers get resolved a few lines into the next chapter. E.g. one chapter ends with Deborah opening and orange and being shocked because blood is coming from it. The next one opens with someone explaining to her what a blood orange is. In most other books I would have rolled my eyes at that but here it fits right into the atmosphere. Because the atmosphere is properly Gothic, mostly because of how great Sir Kit is written. He makes a brilliant gothic villain by being...nice. He is very nice to Deb as long as she does what he wants. Actually he is still very nice is if she doesn't do it...then he smiles and makes sure that she feels very stupid for wanting it in the first place. As someone who has actually an easier time with reading/watching physical violence than gaslighting/emotional manipulation those were scenes that made me very uncomfortable but then that's what they were supposed to do.
And of course The Wife in the Attic doesn't just take ye olden gothic tropes without questioning them. Especially the "Otherness" - in the sense of non-WASP non-English - being the scary thing. Because Deb's family are Portuguese Jews and so for her white (English) people are rather scary. (Not just in a vague sense, her grandmother's family was killed by the inquisition and she suffers from intergenerational trauma). And, more generally the book also has a lot to say about the role of women in that ere and their lack of power...but it does all this while still "staying gothic". Sure, it would be frightening if the villain found out what Deb is doing behind his back. And him discovering that she's Jewish would be even more frightening.
And because everything is so gothic I found it odd that the story continued even after a "proper" gothic novel would have ended. After they escaped the creepy castle. And it doesn't just continue for a bit to tie up some loose ends, the audiobook goes on for over 3 more hours after what I expected the end to be. Now some of it fits together with the modernized gothic tropes, but a lot of it felt like I was suddenly reading/listening to a completely different genre and that made those last hours drag on quite a bit....more
This book was not what I expected from the blurb. I picked it up because I thought it would be a mystery/spy thriller (+ romance) and this was…not thaThis book was not what I expected from the blurb. I picked it up because I thought it would be a mystery/spy thriller (+ romance) and this was…not that. Gennady and Daniel are assigned to investigate a very amateurish assassination attempt on Khrushchev together. Since they’re only decent clue is a scrap from a somewhat obscure magazine they go on a road trip to visit all the subscribers but the story is far more interested in the road trip (during which they experience pretty much every romance trope you can think of…yes they do huddle for warmth in Only One Bed) than the interviews…we only get to see two or three…which is why the case ends up being solved not by them but almost accidentally by the local police. They get back to tie everything up, their working relationship ends, Gennady goes back to the Soviet Union, there’s a time jump to the 1970s when he ends up back in the USA, more romance tropes happen, back to Moscow, another time jump the 90s where they meet again and…well this is a romance novel.
To be perfectly honest: if I had known about this I probably wouldn’t have picked it up. I spent a lot of time during the twee road trip scenes going “Ok but when are you going to do some actual investigating?”. So, no, I’m not the target audience for this book in the first place…however now that I’m here I will also complain about a things that have nothing to do with the fact that this book wasn’t the genre I had expected. Like the fact that this book drowns in romance tropes…now I do love cheesy romance tropes myself but…they have to make sense in context…fit in the story. This books seems on occasions like the author went through a checklist; bedsharing? Check! Christmas together? Check! Major hurt and comfort moment? Check! But it resulted in each scene feeling generic. As if you could swap the order around because there was nothing in it that anchored it at that point in their relationship. (Generally it often felt less like reading about a developing relationship and more like they jumped from one milestone to the next…which can partly blamed on the time jumps but the first part took over half the book there could have been some).
And then there’s…well it’s one thing but it was also so much more than just a minor flaw: One of them gets stabbed at one point and…refuses to go to the hospital for reasons that really make zero sense in context so the other decides to drive him to the FBI headquarter to inform their boss that Dude #1 got stabbed. Because this is the 1950s. Telephones weren’t invented yet. So #2 drives #1 who must be happily bleeding over the whole car because the stab wound has received zero care. He then continues to bleed on the FBI carpet and boss also suggests the hospital but no. So #2 makes a suggestion…
You might want to sit down for this
I have a first aid kit in my car…you know the car I just drove you in. Let’s drive to our motel so that you can bleed a bit more in my car and then I can bandage you up there in the motel…with that kit I have currently in my possession and had already when you were stabbed.
Do you feel my pain?
AND THE STUPID IS NOT OVER YET. Because the caring for the wound involves #1 biting on a belt to stop himself from screaming as if he was a soldier getting his leg sawn off without anaesthetics instead of an agent getting his wound disinfected.
Do you feel my pain?
Do you think that was all?
No, because on the next day #2 gives aspirin and then takes him clothes shopping so #1 can move his body full of a blood-thinner a lot while having a wound that has only been bandaged and not stitched.
Look, I happily accept some leaps of logic to get a good hurt/comfort scene. But it’s not a good scene if I keep wondering how he hasn’t bled to death, yet....more
As much as I love reading about people who fall in love while solving a murder, occasionally I do enjoy something less bloody. Especially in times like these. And especially if it is obvious that while the MCs might not solve big world-changing problems, the stakes are still high. Because - let me get sappy for a moment - somebody's happiness is quite a high stake. And the book does a very good job at convincing me that many people in this book (not just the designated couple) would be absolutely miserable if things went wrong. And that kept me glued to the pages and once again awake somewhat longer than I should have because every time I thought "Well, I'll finish that chapter and then go to sleep." the chapter ended on some bombshell-twist that made me go "b...b...buuut how can that still end happily now? NOW I NEED TO CONTINUE".
Of course, that only works if you care about the characters. And I did. A lot. And not only about the main couple but also the side characters: Robin's sister and Sir John's sister and his niece. None of them is just defined by their relationship to the men; all have their own thoughts, feelings and goals and are amazing characters in their own right. But they also have a great relationship with their brother/uncle and you can tell that they all truly care about each other (which is nice because sometimes it seems fiction is much more interested in destructive and unhealthy family-dynamics).
Something else? Oh right, of course, there are also Robin and John. I know, this is getting repetitive but I loved them. And to get repetitive again let me say something else I keep saying about KJ Charles romances: I loved the amount of thought that went into the balancing of the power dynamics between the two leads. John is rich and very privileged (and not fully aware just how privileged) but also shy and very inexperienced where romantic relationships (and to an extend sex) is concerned. He is resigned to not finding - and not deserving - happiness. Robin meanwhile has no privilege and nothing material to offer. But he has experience in other fields and does everything to convince John that he does deserve the kind of nice things that money can't buy. And that's beautiful....more
I guess I am a joyless Grinch but...this was just Too Much. Too much cutesy witty banter between the leads whose only problem was that while they talkI guess I am a joyless Grinch but...this was just Too Much. Too much cutesy witty banter between the leads whose only problem was that while they talked to each other a lot (in a cutesy and witty way), they did not actually talk to each other about the issues they had with each other. Because once they did, and actually explained their emotions and past actions, after about 150 pages of cutesy and witty banter, they quickly realised that the other person really Had A Point and everything was resolved quickly. I am not saying this is bad. Not every romance needs to be high stakes with the possibility of every misstep resulting in misery, death and/or destruction. I also enjoy the odd low-stakes romance...and some witty banter. But...this was so low stakes it could have fit into a novella and as a full-length novel, it just dragged on too long for me....more
As many of my friends will tell you, my standards aren't exactly high where the quality of my reading material is concerned but I draw the line somewhAs many of my friends will tell you, my standards aren't exactly high where the quality of my reading material is concerned but I draw the line somewhere. And what always annoys me are authors who drop foreign language phrases into their books without checking them with someone who actually speaks the language. No, those little dots on some of our letters aren't fancy decoration you can leave off if you're too lazy to open your special character menu. They actually mean something. And if I, a native speaker of the language you are violently abusing via god knows what online dictionary or third rate machine translation engine you used, have to spend a considerable amount of time staring at a sentence to figure out what you meant...
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("We sat and drank Zitronen" btw...which I guess means lemonade but how on earth you got there I don't know)...more
Historical Accuracy Go on, say that phrase to a group of historical romance lovers and watch what happens next. Probably bloodshed.
In short: there wDNF
Historical Accuracy Go on, say that phrase to a group of historical romance lovers and watch what happens next. Probably bloodshed.
In short: there were a lot less hot, rich, young dukes than romance novels suggest. Very few of them married impoverished ladies or governesses and they all probably had really bad teeth. There's still a lot of novels about hot dukes with lots of money and great teeth marrying a governess. And there's nothing wrong with that. If that's your jam, have fun. (Nb: another part of that discussion is people complaining that it's "not historically accurate for LGBT people or POCs to get a happy end" and often that argument comes from people who read/write a lot about hot dukes with great teeth but that's not what I want to talk about right now).
But some people also object to romances between hot dukes and governesses because it's essentially a relationship between employer and employee and they are uncomfortable with the power imbalance in that kind of relationship and they can't just ignore that. Does that make them better people than those who can ignore it? No. It just means that some people can ignore those things and enjoy something and others can't. Just like some people can ignore it when the descriptions in a book show that the author never set foot in the place they're describing, or that they haven't grasped the finer points of a certain law or that they have a character use a word that only came in use 25 years after the book takes place and others can't ignore these things.
Which finally brings me to this book. You were probably already wondering if I would ever get to the point. I cannot ignore that every single of the 'nice' nobles in this book is totally cool with voting rights for women and the working classes, that they not only have absolutely no issues with it but are actively working for it. That they are basically BFFs with their servants. And that this way the only conflict comes from cartoonishly evil moustache-twirling villains who blackmail and kidnap and laugh evilly. And in between all this, our nice nobles insult the non-nice nobles because that's not going to have any consequences.
Would it have been nice to have so many people with so modern attitudes in the past? Of course, but there weren't. And I can't just ignore it. Especially not when there are books that deal with Regency politics in a much better way (Rose Lerner's St. Lemeston books, especially True Pretenses or KJ Charles' Society of Gentlemen). That feature friends who disagree on things, sometimes quite severely. Where not everything is fluffy all the time, because politics can't be completely fluffy-fied. ...more
1. I started it Sunday morning and was then glued to the pageThis review can also be found on my blog
There’s two things I need to say about this book:
1. I started it Sunday morning and was then glued to the pages for most of the day until I finished shortly after midnight 2. While being glued to the pages, I also rolled my eyes a lot.
Because this book is essentially The Da Vinci Code with the Tudors. Admittedly, with less awkward prose and without Browns weird well-meaning but utterly condescending sexism. But it’s still a book about an awesome academic who discovers that the story we’ve been told about a historic figure is wrong and then she is hunted by a shady organisation who wants to stop her from making that knowledge public. Only it’s not about Jesus but Catherine Howard.
And that’s where things fall apart somewhat because while an organisation of Vatican assassins who hunt people that found out that Jesus was actually married and had children is stupid, it also has some internal logic. Jesus is pretty important for a lot of people. And so is the image of him as an unmarried man. If we are in parallel conspiracy universe, I can buy that people would kill to keep that a secret.
The Catherine Howard Conspiracy posits that the fact that she wasn’t executed has to be kept a secret because…people would get upset if the Divorced, Beheaded and Died. Divorced, Beheaded, Survived-rhyme didn’t work anymore? The argument they make is that history is important to people and (national) identity and finding out that history isn’t what everybody thought it is would cause an uproar. And the example they give is Richard III and how everybody thought he was an evil hunchback but then they found his bones, discovered his spine wasn’t deformed and then everybody also went back on the evil bit and accepted that Richard was actually one of the good guys. Which is not what happened. As this clip from a kids TV-show that was broadcast about a year before they found Richard’s bones, shows.
Arguments about how many of the bad stories about Richard are true and how many are made up by people who were paid by the Tudors has been discussed by historians for a long time. Granted, finding the bones has probably brought that to the attention of a lot of people whose entire knowledge about him had come from the Shakespeare play but I seriously doubt that these people were so upset by that revelation that they then voted for Brexit. Or whatever it was the book was trying to convince me off.
There are so many historical figures and events that historians argue about. Because there is no such thing as an unbiased source. We get descriptions from people who have their own reasons for making someone look good or bad, from people who couldn’t believe that women might have an agency of their own or that gay people existed. Or perhaps they even tried to be neutral but wrote about someone who deliberately tried to appear different from how they actually were. And the further back you go, the harder it gets to find a person where historians agree on all aspects of his or her life. Of course, some of these controversies are more well known than others but building a whole book on History is a fixed thing and must never be changed is so ridiculous that I cannot buy at all, not even if it’s just the premise for a light entertainment read.
And that’s a shame because, I really enjoyed the book at first, since I did not look very closely at the cover and it wasn’t immediately obvious that this was a “gripping conspiracy thriller”. There was just Catherine’s story – starting with her time at Henry’s court – and Perdita’s story – who inherits Marquess house and finds papers there that make her doubt the official story. Admittedly, Catherine’s story was a bit too much. Too much making sure the reader really likes her. She’s not the semi-illiterate woman who’s stupid enough to screw around while being married to a guy who already beheaded one wife for infidelity. Instead, she’s incredibly clever, sends complex coded messages, makes sure that she’s not even alone with her own brother once it becomes clear that Henry intends to marry her and is so incredibly kind-hearted that she’s even trying to help the people who’ve been plotting against her. And to make sure we really like her and feel sorry for her, there are several quite graphic scenes where Henry rapes her…have I mentioned that she’s 15/16 at the time of the story?
Now I would like to throw a controversial opinion out there: it doesn’t matter if Catherine was stupid, couldn’t write her own name and screwed the entire court. She was also a teenager who had no choice but to marry Henry. She did not deserve to be murdered. There’s no need to portray her as an angelic creature who saves puppies in her free time to convince me of that.
On the other hand, life is depressing and especially female characters are rarely allowed to be sympathetic and unlikeable and who am I to judge the author for telling a story with more mass appeal?
So, if this had just been a story of angelic Catherine and Perdita who goes on a treasure hunt to discover the truth and the conflict and tension had come from something that wasn’t her being hunted by secret government agencies, I’d have enjoyed this book. (Though I would have still side-eyed all the on-page rape of a 15-year-old very hard). But then the story turned into…well, The Tudor Code and I could not buy that, not in the way it was presented.
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