Do You like book Reluctant Queen: The Story Of Henry VIII's Defiant Little Sister (2014)?
(For those who don't know about Mary's story, this review might be spoilerish.)I'm not sure why I finished this book, honestly. Evans turns Mary Tudor, queen of France and later Duchess of Suffolk, into a whiny, self-pitying bore, surrounded by characters who are equally unlikable.The novel--most of which is entirely "telling" and not "showing"--opens with Mary's marriage to the ailing French king. Much of the first half consists of Francis, heir to the French throne and later king, making passes at Mary. Mary, of course, eventually escapes Francis's clutches and marries the love of her life, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. It's all downhill from here. The rest of the novel is spent largely with Mary fretting about her husband's debts, the validity of their marriage, and his support of the king's new love interest, Anne Boleyn. Anne is a purely one-dimensional shrew, who bears Mary a grudge for giving her some cast-off gowns when Anne was a lowly maid of honor. Anne is even blamed for the shortcomings of Mary's equally one-dimensional daughter Frances, who spends most of her time in the novel sulking because her mother won't let her at court to be around Anne. Charles Brandon must have had a certain charisma, but none of it is evident here. After his marriage, he spends most of his time whining about his debts, bad-mouthing Wolsey, neglecting Mary, or quarreling with her over Anne Boleyn.Strangely, although this book was published fairly recently and the matter could have been easily researched, Evans depicts Mary as having only one son, Henry, who in the novel dies before she does. In fact, Mary had two sons named Henry, one who predeceased her and one, the Earl of Lincoln, who outlived Mary by a few months.Oddly, Katherine Willoughby, Charles' ward and future bride, is absent from this novel. She was lucky.
—Susan
haha excellent timing! but yeah sometimes US vs UK publishers do stuff like that, or different release dates etc. It used to be way more confusing before goodreads haha
—Cait
