Lesley S. reviewed on 10/25/2009 + 50 more book reviews

A fun read for a rainy day. I found the narrator, Anne Boleyn's sister, Mary, to be engaging and relatively non-cardboard cut-out'ish. Her descriptions of her fun loving older brother, George, also one of Henry VIII's courtiers were similarly engaging and realistic. Anne Boleyn, however, read like a pretty but humorless harridan in this telling. Given how shrewish she was described throughout, it's hard to believe anyone this nasty - no matter how beautiful or alluring - could get a powerful, fun-loving king to not only make enemies with the Spanish emperor by setting aside his aunt, Henry's wife of 20 years - Katherine of Aragon - to marry a notorious tramp, but to alienate the Pope as well and completely rewrite church history. The scheming ways of Anne's family, members of Boleyn and Howard clans, were shocking and interesting to watch as they clawed their way to power, using - and viewing - their daughters as disposable pawns.

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