Customer Reviews

The King's Favorite: A Novel of Nell Gwyn and King Charles II

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I have had a particular fondness for Nell Gwyn ever since reading a book called Sex With Kings and reading her hilarious antics as the mistress of Charles II, yet until now, have not actually read any fiction on her; and I must say, picking this book up was one of the best things I have ever done. Seriously. This is the first book by Susan Holloway Scott that I have read and after this I intend to read every book that she has written.

Meet Nell, our fiesty and hilarious heroine with a quick wit and a big and honest heart, who at a young age knows that her destiny lies in the arms and heart of England's beloved monarch, Charles II. Starting as the mistress of a gentleman, Nell soon climbs the ladder that ultimately leads to the love of her life- selling oranges at the King's Theatre, and then becoming the star of the stage and the darling of the British people.

We follow Nell's life through her own eyes, which has as many advantages to it as disadvantages; some being the fact that we get to see the events as they happen from Nell herself, but at times it is at the expense of the other equally memorable characters. You do get a sense of good character vs bad character throughout this novel. One of the best parts of this book is the authors attention to historical detail- she has not changed alot of the events or in fact the words of her characters- choosing simply to write them down as they happened, with fluid prose and laugh out loud moments of hysteria. Events fall into place with ease and Nell's narrative is easy to read and hilarious in content.

One of my critiscisms of this book is Nell's "blahzay" attitude to some of the major events of her life- the entire way through she is our lovable, honest and carefree heroine however when certain events happen to her, she doesn't seem to worry about them for too long and only displays the vaguest of emotion about them- for example her treatment compared to other mistresses. The other critiscism I have for this book is the way that nearly every chapter ends on a negative note of "worse to come" circumstances that don't actually occur or aren't as bad as they actually are- think drama queen, melodramatic etc etc.

Some of the sayings the author employed hindered my understanding- I got the general gist but after the third of these didn't really see the point in having them; yes they added to the period and the detail but as a modern reader I would have been just as happy with posh and elegant speeches than with C17 phrasing- although I love her very down to Earth; "Pox on ____" that Nell employs quite frequently- it really added to her characterisation.

Overall, this is the first book that I have read by this author and it most certainly will not be the last. The book was well researched, well written and had three dimensional characters- made all the better by the fact that unlike other authors Susan didn't feel the need to over dramatise/"Hollywoodise" the events and words of her characters, realising that they were hilarious without needing to edit them. I read this book in one sitting, starting in the morning and finishing without taking a breath late in the evening- time literally passed me by.

A brilliant book and a great look at the life of the extraordinary Nell Gwyn.

4 solid stars.

While not a big fan of the first person narration which narrows down the reader's scope of the story and dampens the suspense (the reason why I rate this book a 4.5 instead of 5 stars), I enjoyed this book tremendously.

The witty-naughty Nell Gwyn was a fun character to root for and to follow her exploits. The research that went into this book is remarkable. The vivid canvas enriches an already humorous and fun to read story.

This is my first read from Susan Holloway Scott. I look forward to reading her other books.

I love historical fiction and I am always on the look out for books that take place during the 12-18th centrury in Europe. I knew very little about Nell Gwyn and after reading this book I realized that might be a good thing. Nell Gwyn was a mistress of King Charles II and is suppose to be "bawdy, blessed with impudend wit and saucy good looks". Her mother and sister were whores and she spent her early years in a whore house.

The book is bawdy but about as witty as getting a filling in your tooth. The dialogue is so incredibly bad and not funny that it was all I could do to finish it. The author also does a poor job of giving a bit details on some of the historical events that happens during Charles II. She glosses over them with minor detail and unless you are familiar with this time period-around 1660's in England-you will find yourself searching for a bit more clarification on historical figures and events.

The author has impressive credentials but she really missed the mark on this book. If you want to more about Nell Gwyn do yourself a favor and read about her on Wikipedia. It is a better read than this book.

I have read a number of this author's books and have enjoyed them all, with the exception of this one. I found reading it quite tedious. The author's characterization of Nell Gwyn, who was mistress to Charles II, was almost unpleasant. I had expected her to be likable, but I found her to be anything but.

The author strove to make Nell Gwyn funny and witty but was way off the mark. She succeeded only in making her tiresome, annoying, and boring. The author left me wondering why Charles II would have even given her the time of day, much less made her his mistress for many years.

Add bad dialogue to the mix and the inability to make anyone found within the pages of the book remotely interesting, and one has a book that is pure drudgery to read. Reading it was most definitely a hard slog and not at all enjoyable. I love historical fiction, but this book missed the mark.

I don't generally read a lot of historical fiction, and definitely not much about the restoration era and King Charles II. However, someone gave me The French Mistress: A Novel of the Duchess of Portsmouth and King Charles II and I so enjoyed it I made it a point to read this and Duchess: A Novel of Sarah Churchill. Here's the ups and downs of this one, and how it stacked up versus the others for me:

- Susan Holloway Scott is a great writer with a unique ability to capture the viewpoint of her heroine.
It was interesting to live through how Nell might have viewed herself and actions after having read in the previous book how the Duchess of Portsmouth viewed her. (She couldn't stand her.) And, as in her previous books, I was swept away into the time.

- Nell is a great heroine - feisty, imaginative and fun who seems to "get" Charles in ways others may have not. It makes for a fun read.

- However, I was dissappointed like another reviewer that her story didn't carry through to Charles demise. Yet, once again Holloway provides a nice summary of the historical events and the impact of real history on Nell and her legacy.

- All in all, I enjoyed this one slightly less than "The French Mistress" - which is more thorough and I found more engaging, but more than "The Duchess", the one on Sarah Churchill - which is slightly disconnected from these about his mistresses.

- Others who are very familiar with this historical time may not find them as eye-opening or fascinating as I since I wasn't familiar with it. But, even they I think, if they enjoy romantic tales will find Holloway's ability to breath true life into Nell a nice escape into another's world.

BOTTOM LINE: Another entertaining, fascinating and well-written fictional look at the reign of King Charles told from one of his favored mistresses viewpoint, that will sweep you away to another time and perhaps teach you something along the way. Though, I recommend reading these out of order and reading "The French Mistress" first to enjoy it more.

I didn't hate this book. Susan Holloway Scott has writing talent, for sure, and at the beginning, I rather liked THE KING'S FAVORITE, the story of Nell Gwyn, mistress to King Charles II. But after the first few chapters, it seemed Scott had run out of tricks and the narrative became tiresome, overdramatic, and when not simply mediocre, quite irritating.

I'm not sure if I was supposed to like Nell. Historically, she's the only one of King Charles's mistresses that I actually do like, but here she was tedious. The real Nell was witty in a genuinely amusing, if tasteless, way. Here, she's not funny at all. Her jokes are stale, her internal dialogue is unattractive. She seems like the most simple-minded of people, even though it seems that the author is trying to make her practical and sharp, in her own fashion. I wouldn't want to meet Scott's version of Nell... she would bore me to death and seems like just the kind of person to make your mouth hurt with all the fake smiling you'd have to do in order not to hurt her feelings by letting her know she's not funny. And it seems like her every other thought is about how hilarious she is. She's also unnecessarily dramatic and fond of ending each chapter with a foreboding sentence, such as "But oh, what we would become. What we would become" and "I was wrong... Horribly, miserably wrong."

I did like the way that historical events were incorporated, but seen appropriately through the eyes of the character. Nell Gwyn would not care overmuch about things that did not concern her, so every event was shown in its proper light from her perspective and not overblown like some historical novels--ironic, considering that if I could pick a word to describe The King's Favorite, it would be, in fact, "overblown." As a trend in fiction, however, I'm not entirely thrilled with this shift towards writing solely about mistresses. I think that if this book had been shown through the POV of several figures, instead of just Nell, it would have been more interesting. For instance, Forever Amber (It's an unfair comparison, but bear with me) was more of a 3rd person omniscient which gave you a little break from the not always so endearing Amber. Here, there's no escaping Nell, and Nell's world is centered entirely on the king, who is given a traditional and not particularly interesting characterization. Sometimes the Earl of Rochester pops in, but he's made so boring that I found myself actually skipping the paragraphs that included him when usually I love him as a character.

I'll give this 2.5, rounded up, solely because the beginning caught my interest. But I would not recommend this to someone who has other books waiting in their TBR pile. It would be a better use of time to read something else, and since this might be the first book I've ever fallen asleep while reading, avoiding it might save you a good deal of drudgery.

Susan Scott does a lot of things very well in "The King's Favorite". It's unusual to find an author who can write from the first person point of view without turning the protagonist into a shining exemplar of unerring, perfect omniscience. Scott doesn't do this: her Nell Gwyn is ignorant without knowing it, brash without fully recognizing it, sweet and loyal without understanding herself exactly how sweet she is. Ignorance especially isn't easy to portray from this point of view, but Scott does it very well.

I also liked how she handled contemporary texts. Nell's occupation as an actress and her friendships with the wits of the day gave Scott the opportunity to lace her story with quotes from men like Rochester, Killegrew, and Dryden, but she didn't just throw them in willy-nilly; she used them appropriately *and* she was careful to have her characters attribute the words to their original writers. That shows not just talent but integrity.

There were a few things, though, that I didn't enjoy as much. For one thing, every chapter seems to end with a melodramatic cliffhanger where Nell promises great horrors that never actually materialize. I suspect Scott wanted to show that Nell's theatre experience made her melodramatic and prone to using tricks like this, but for me it simply didn't work. The trick turned into the boy who cried wolf: when something awful actually did occur, I didn't notice it because I simply assumed it was yet another false alarm. The climax and denouement seemed off to me as well, not because it was undramatic or unrealistic but because it was a relatively minor incident in both Charles's and Nell's lives. For me the book would have been more satisfying if it had continued until Charles's death, with Nell finding out only afterwards that he had intended to ennoble her - leaving her wondering if he had intended to honour her or discard her.

All in all, however, this was a good book, and I recommend it.

If history books in schools were as entertaining as this one I might have even paid attention to the lesson rather than having to keep myself from falling out of the chair of boredom. Written from the perspective of Nell Gwynn, this novel has enough historical detail to educate the likes of me who have little patience for the tedium of history. On the other hand it is written with plenty of intriguing and at times explicitly delicious intimate detail to keep the reader entertained. Nell Gwynn's character is well developed and fascinating to say the least. She is truly ahead of her time, beating the odds and rising from poverty to being the king's favorite mistress. More interesting than the span she covered is the way she did it. Self assured and witty she became one of England's first actresses. Though her ultimate aspiration was to become the king's favorite mistress, Nell Gwynn singlehandedly rebuffed all the men in her life who wished to profit or otherwise try to control her. This is no small feat in light of the existing dynamics between the genders at that time. Just as long as you were not the target of her jests Nell Gwynn is a colorful and endearing character indeed.

After thoroughly enjoying Susan Holloway Scott's Royal Harlot, I was eager to jump into another of her wonderful Restoration-era novels. I, was, however, curious has to how this one would measure up. I'd already read about the Countess of Castlemaine, Sarah Churchill and the Duchess of Portsmouth in previous novels, so I was a little concerned about reading practically the same story yet again, only through the eyes of another character. Plus there's the fact that I read Diane Haeger's The Perfect Royal Mistress earlier this year, which is also about Nell Gwyn, so I already had a very clear idea of what to expect.

Despite all of this, Susan Holloway Scott thoroughly enchanted me with The King's Favorite. The King's Favorite tells the story of Nell Gwyn, a low-born woman from the dregs of London. After getting a job as an orange seller at the local playhouse, she meets Charles Hart, and, through him, works her way up to being an actress. In this new role, she captures the attention of King Charles II himself, who has always had a vice for beautiful women, despite his long-time liaison with the Countess of Castlemaine and his wife, Queen Catherine. Using only her wit, her wanton-ness and zest for life, Nell captures the heart of the King and of London, but she soon finds that the perils of court are unlike anything else that she's experienced.

Nell is painted as an incredibly lively, fun character with something of a crude mouth, but a knowledgeable sense of what really makes the world go round. From beginning to end, I was in love with Nell's character. She was well-developed and fun to read about, not to mention lively, but somewhat innocent in the world of court politics. Just like all of Charles II's other mistresses, Nell constantly risks the threat of him putting her aside while trying to keep his favor, bear him sons (even though they are illegitimate) and, most importantly, overcome the taint of her low birth.

Scott does another exquisite job of painting the bawdy court of Charles II and depicting the cutthroat, yet thrilling world of royal mistress politics. However, now that I've read about this same period four times from Scott, I feel like it's time for something else. But still, King's Favorite is another great offering from Scott.

I loved this book! I'd heard of Nell Gwyn before, just in quick reference in some other books I've read, but this was my fist book solely about her. I think Ms. Scott did a fantastic job of capturing Nell's voice and character.

Nell is a tiny scrap of a woman with a huge personality and an even bigger heart. The story of her rise from a dingy London whorehouse, to orange girl at the King's Theatre, to a player at said theatre, to finally, the King's mistress, is one filled with wit and laughter, but also pain and suffering. With an abusive, alcoholic, whoring mother, and a sister who's following in her footsteps, Nell decides she wants more for herself and does everything she can to achieve this goal. However, she does it honestly, using her extraordinary wit and gift of making people laugh, not by scheming and backstabbing, as so many others of her time did.

I absolutely recommend this if you're at all interested in British history. I've spent a good deal of time in Tudor-Era England, so it was a nice change of scenery for me to read about Restoration England, a period I knew hardly anything about. I will say, the ONLY issue I had (and the reason for 4 stars and not 5)...it was a tad long. It seemed, towards the end of the novel, that we'd been down that road before...Rochester's crazy antics, Buckingham's traitors ways, and all the grievances with Parliament...got a little repetitive. Overall though, I thoroughly enjoyed this. Ms. Scott is a wonderful storyteller, and I'll DEFINITELY be picking up her other novels.