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Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0
This is NOT Elizabeth! - but still worth a read. Much of the book is satisfying. To a modern reader the four point tension, Elizabeth, her spymaster Cecil, her first great love Robin, and his wife Amy, handles well, with other characters made severely secondary. Though in the case of Blanche Parry, rather too secondary perhaps, more of that below.
I did like the early uncertainty by Elizabeth on court procedures, as she had been much shut away; giving the court expert Robin some of his first power base with her. Also their shared horror from being... more info
An Elizabethan Tug of War I love Philippa Gregory's Tudor novels and am only sorry that I have now concluded reading all of them. This one has some problems that disappointed me - Elizabeth is a giggling, easily-led dope, and not the shrewd manipulator and politician that we know her to be from historical record. I suspect Dudley and Cecil are fairly accurately represented, however, and I was very interested in the viewpoint of Amy Dudley, the innocent wife cast aside in favor of power and the title of King. This was an... more info
A woman who happens to be a queen When i finished with The Queen's Fool, i've hated Elizabeth for her laughing at her sister's misfortune. Philippa has deliberately darken the character of Elizabeth in that book. But in this one, Elizabeth is no more than a woman who happens to be a queen. I would like to believe her love to Robert is real, so it makes the saddest love story of monarchs. Honestly i did not fully finish the book. There's still about a 100 pages left, but i just couldn't stand to see Amy killed, worse, i don't want to... more info
Brilliant but not as good as the others I only discovered Philippa Gregory a month ago and I am already a big fan. Having read 'The Other Boleyan Girl' and 'The Queen's Fool' and thoroughly enjoyed them I was quite excited to read 'The Virgin's Lover' and I am pleased to say that although not as good as it's predessesors it is still a very worthwhile read. Previous reviewers have summarised the story so I won't repeat what's already been said but let me just state that this book is excellently written and definitely deserves to be on the... more info
