Khanh, first of her name, mother of bunnies's Reviews > The Boleyn Inheritance

I'm a sucker for Tudor historicals. It never gets old reading about the six queens of Henry VIII, and it gives me a serious appreciation for my daily life after reading about the dangers of living in the past. Having a tendency to stick my foot in my mouth results in social ostracism these days for me, in the past, I could have been beheaded, raped, drawn, tortured, disemboweled, boiled alive.

And if I'm lucky, it would have been done in that order.

While it's no torture reading this book, I did find it drawn on and I am not a fan of the characterization. Besides Anne of Cleves, who is admittedly dull, the other two main characters in this book, the unfortunate Jane, Lady Boleyn and the infantile Queen Katherine, both seem like caricatures. Jane is a devious, desperate shrew unable to see the truth of her actions until the very end, and Katherine would make Cher of Clueless fame seem positively brilliant in comparison. I find it particularly grating that she keeps repeating "Now let me see, what do I have?" in the beginning of her sections. I understand that the author is trying to reinforce the fact that Katherine is empty-headed, materialistic, and vain, but there is a way of doing it correctly to gain the reader's sympathy; having her grate on the reader's nerves is not how it's done.