When Mary Boleyn comes to court as an innocent girl of fourteen, she catches the eye of Henry VIII. Dazzled, Mary falls in love with both her golden prince and her growing role as unofficial queen. However, she soon realizes just how much she is a pawn in her family's ambitious plots as the king's interests begin to wane and she is forced to step aside for her best friend and rival: her sister, Anne. Then Mary knows what she must defy her family and her kind and take her fate into her own hands.
A rich and compelling novel of love, sex, ambition, and intrigue, 'The Other Boleyn Girl' introduces a woman of extraordinary determination and desire who lived at the heart of the most exciting and glamorous court in Europe and survived by following her heart."
This might sound horrible, but I breathed a sigh of relief as soon as I read the last word on page 661 (the very last page).
This was one of the greatest books that I've ever read. Hands down. My sister gave me my copy for Christmas last year and I only started reading it this past summer. It took months to finish, but honestly, I did not mind devoting that much time to a single book because this story was very well-written, the people in it were absolutely fascinating! And to know that they existed in real life (well, most of them, I'm guessing) is absolutely amazing!
Might as well get this warning out of the way... there's a lot of sex in this book. It's basically what it revolves around-- seducing the king, bedding the king, producing his children. It's a vicious cycle. If you're sensitive to this kind of reading, this is absolutely not the right book for you.
I'm typically not a hiostorical fiction person, but it was terribly interesting, so I'm going to have to read more in the future.
As interesting as this book was, it was absolutely exhausting reading about Anne trying to capture the king's heart and then moving on to the next step. It was like walking on egg shells. But the thing is, that is a representation of good writing because that's exactly what was happening in the book-- they were ALL walking on egg shells.
Philippa Gregory did an excellent job with the pacing of the book. It's true, the book is two/two and a half inches thick, but since the story lasts over the course of many years, it's justified.
Even though the book is long, you will never be bored because there's always some sort of plotting going on or a baby being born... that type of thing.
"The Other Boleyn Girl" is scandalous, passionate, and never boring. I give it:
--Jude
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