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A review by angelofthetardis
The Dead Queens Club by Hannah Capin
emotional
funny
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
This has been on my TBR list since I heard about it on the 'Not Just The Tudors' podcast. But trying to find it has been a nightmare! Can't get it on Kindle, wasn't available in any format from the library, and any online orders seem to come from the US, making it quite expensive! But then I just happened to be looking at BorrowBox (my library's ebook service) for something else, and it popped up as now being avaialble in their audiobook selection!
Cross the story of Henry VIII and his wives with Mean Girls, or any other drama set in a US high school, and this is what results. Henry is the star quarterback, and his wing woman Anna, aka Cleves, stands by and watches as he works his way through the dating drama that is senior year. A budding journalist, she can't help but be intrigued by the story that one of Henry's exes died at prom the previous year... but was it an accident? Or murder?
Listening to the audio version of this really helped me get into the characters - the narrator has the perfect, almost stereotypical, US high school popular girl sounding voice, so I was immediately grounded in place; something that I don't think would have happened as fast if I'd just been reading. When I first heard it I thought it would get on my nerves after a short while, but actually the narration was very good overall; very easy to listen to and done exactly the way I like it - enough changes in pitch and tone to denote a different character speaking, but without giving all of them different voices.
The writing itself also matches the setting and characters - it sounds as if the writer was the same age as the characters, or at the very least she was basing speech patterns on teenagers she knows! There is quite a lot of swearing throughout, but it's just the vernacular; it probably is gratuitous, but because it's teenagers it doesn't feel like it!
The story is cleverly done; it takes all the familiar tropes of Henry and his wives and, for the most part, matches them up with relatable high school equivalents. The biggest change is probably the main character, Anna, who clearly wasn't Henry's best friend in reality! But she did hang around in England after their divorce, and actually survived him by quite some time, so putting her in this position is actually not as mad as it initially sounds. I particularly like that the writer has picked up on other, lesser known characters and events and utilised those for extra depth. And yet at the same time it feels like this could be any US high school senior year!
The only downside with the audio version is that it takes so long to get through it! While I was invested and could easily remember where I was in the story, I thought on several occasions it was coming to an end, only to realise that I actually had several hours left to listen to. Given that the physical book is somewhere between 400 and 500 pages, I could have read it far quicker.
However, I'm no longer worried about incurring the expense of a physical copy, as I now know it's a great book, and one I will definitely read again!
Cross the story of Henry VIII and his wives with Mean Girls, or any other drama set in a US high school, and this is what results. Henry is the star quarterback, and his wing woman Anna, aka Cleves, stands by and watches as he works his way through the dating drama that is senior year. A budding journalist, she can't help but be intrigued by the story that one of Henry's exes died at prom the previous year... but was it an accident? Or murder?
Listening to the audio version of this really helped me get into the characters - the narrator has the perfect, almost stereotypical, US high school popular girl sounding voice, so I was immediately grounded in place; something that I don't think would have happened as fast if I'd just been reading. When I first heard it I thought it would get on my nerves after a short while, but actually the narration was very good overall; very easy to listen to and done exactly the way I like it - enough changes in pitch and tone to denote a different character speaking, but without giving all of them different voices.
The writing itself also matches the setting and characters - it sounds as if the writer was the same age as the characters, or at the very least she was basing speech patterns on teenagers she knows! There is quite a lot of swearing throughout, but it's just the vernacular; it probably is gratuitous, but because it's teenagers it doesn't feel like it!
The story is cleverly done; it takes all the familiar tropes of Henry and his wives and, for the most part, matches them up with relatable high school equivalents. The biggest change is probably the main character, Anna, who clearly wasn't Henry's best friend in reality! But she did hang around in England after their divorce, and actually survived him by quite some time, so putting her in this position is actually not as mad as it initially sounds. I particularly like that the writer has picked up on other, lesser known characters and events and utilised those for extra depth. And yet at the same time it feels like this could be any US high school senior year!
The only downside with the audio version is that it takes so long to get through it! While I was invested and could easily remember where I was in the story, I thought on several occasions it was coming to an end, only to realise that I actually had several hours left to listen to. Given that the physical book is somewhere between 400 and 500 pages, I could have read it far quicker.
However, I'm no longer worried about incurring the expense of a physical copy, as I now know it's a great book, and one I will definitely read again!