Name: The Unfaithful Queen
ISBN: 9780312596910

Carolly Erickson

The best-selling author of The Last Wife of Henry VIII presents a tale inspired by the life of Catherine Howard that traces her early years as a sensual plaything for a series of lovers and her treasonous passion for Tom Culpepper before her failure to produce a son for the king and scandalous allegations condemn her to death.

A Novel of Henry VIII's Fifth Wife

The Unfaithful Queen

Lacy W

tw: derogatory slang toward women, sexist remarks, graphic descriptions of death and murder

This was an okay book. Wasn't great by any means but I enjoyed it somewhat. This book did make me excited for Allison Weir's book about Catherine Howard. But that was about the only thing I really took away from this book.

I think my main problem with this book was Catherine herself. There were times that she acted mature and other times where she was an actual child dressed as a teenager. She was very much concerned about her looks or how other people looked. It started to really get to me after a while. I didn't care that she thought someone was gross looking or had stains on their dresses. 

One of the biggest things that really bothered me was the relationship between Kitty (as I have seen her called in other books) and Henry. Okay, yes, I know that Henry was horrible and lusted after young girls. I was bothered by that, of course. But what really bothered me was the reason Henry loved Kitty so much was because she looked just like her mother. Her mother and Henry were passionately in love and had a child that died. It just seemed like borderline incest to me and I wasn't keen on it. 

The book itself was written weird. It was in the form of a diary but with no dates. Words like mother and father were not capitalized. Grandma was also used and I'm not entirely sure the word grandma was used during that time. (correct me if I'm wrong though.)

Overall, despite my less then stellar review, this was an alright book. I branched out of my normal historical fiction authors and that is something to be proud of. On to the next book.

The Unfaithful Queen A Novel of Henry VIII's Fifth Wife

Reviews

Highlights