A review by caterinaanna
The Queen's Sorrow by Suzannah Dunn

2.0

Mary Tudor in this book is like the monarch in the Suzanne Vega song about the queen and the soldier. She has her troubles and a naive man believes that, as a result, things will go well for him. There are good descriptions of a harsh time in London - awful weather, poor harvests, capricious politics and lives turned upside-down - and a real attempt to make the reader sympathise with Rafael. However I could not credit his final mistake and so the only credible character in the book was, for me, destroyed. While I appreciate the need to update speech patterns, Dunn's lexicon included too many anachronisms which were jarring rather than subtle.