Bookworm Blurbs

This book took me FOREVER to read because I started it during the school year and then I got caught up in my book club books and just kind of neglected it for like 6 months, haha. However, this is not a reflection on the quality of the book at ALL - it's actually a really good book and a great part of the Cousins' War series. 

I got into the series because of reading the White Queen, and as soon as this book came out on Kindle I made sure to download it. Once again, I was fascinated by Philippa Gregory's ability to take an obscure historical figure who we know almost nothing about and bring her to life. Her portrayal of Anne Neville was believable, and she created a woman who is both likeable and flawed - just like she probably was in real life. 

What I was most impressed by was the way that Philippa Gregory is able to tie everything in the series together. This isn't a typical series, because instead of having each book be a continuation of a story, each book is a different woman's version of the same story. I don't know if I just never picked up on it in the other books or if things are finally coming together with this one, but Gregory was able to take tiny details from other books and pull them out and explain them so we got to see a completely different explanation of the role that each event played in the Cousins' War. She explores the mystery of the princes in the Tower and she's slowly ruling out each potential suspect, which is really interesting, as a lover of history, to read. I was especially interested in Gregory's portrayal of Richard III. In most versions of his story, authors make him seem like some sort of power-hungry monster, but in this, he was an ambitious man, but one who ultimately was loyal to his family. 

I definitely recommend this book, first to people who enjoy romance novels - because this book does have romance in it - but also to lovers of history, especially Plantagenet/Tudor history. I don't know if the Cousins' War is very studied in England, but in America, one rarely hears of it. I think it's a very interesting topic and definitely worth taking the time to learn about!