This book was entertaining. I realize with history you have to abide by the facts (for the most part) and you can't change the outcome so an author is a bit limited. The few things I had a problem with was the author always telling us it was Mary speaking. We, for the most part, are educated individuals and do not need an author to tell us every sentence when the main character is speaking. The second thing was that while I know Mary I was plagued with ill health, if she had been ill with what I believe to be migraines as often as the author writes her being debilitated by them, then she would have had no time whatsoever for ruling the country. It seemed like every other day this poor woman was hit by a debilitating migraine that left her bedridden for several days. I don't know if the author was using the poor health of Mary to make her more sympathetic or to make the reader forget that she is known through history as Bloody Mary (a title I feel she did NOT deserve in the first place).
I liked the idea that the author put in the friendship with Katherine Parr that I had read in biographies so that was a plus. However, the strange spelling of Katherine (which in all my reading of historical novels and biographies was never spelled that way) was someone jarring though I suspect this was done because Henry VIII (and hence Mary) had so many Katherines in their lives.
I felt sorry for both Mary and Lady Jane Grey but I have never understood why others in the overthrow/coup were pardoned but Jane had to die. Yes, I know it was part of Philip of Spain's conditions of marriage but if Mary would have acted on ruling about Jane before negiotiations for her marriage were began, she could have kept Jane a prisoner for several years (like Henry II did his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine) and Jane would have become a martyr and Mary might not have such an evil reputation.
This book does a good job of showing the reader that Mary I was much more than Bloody Mary as history has proclaimed her.
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