I was also disappointed that a key part of her personality was left out and that was her Protestantism. I guess women aren't better leaders after all. I think I also laughed because the whole speech was about how women might be better leaders than men, but then you realize she's arguing for a woman who ordered the death of hundreds of Protestants at the stake and placed her own half sister (Anne's daughter, nonetheless) under house arrest, earning the nickname Bloody Mary. She hated her stepdaughter, and the only reason why she would have been in favor of a queen was because of her own daughter. I also snorted with laughter at her whole 'Mary (as in Henry's daughter Mary) will be queen' speech. She would never have truly fallen for a poet, she was more pragmatic than that. I wish this book had portrayed her as the ruthless social climber she probably was instead of foisting her into this role of a whiny girl who just wanted love and especially Daddy's love. That is false, and frankly insulting to the real Anne Boleyn, who was so much more than that. The Anne in this novel seemed like some feminist, too modern for the time she grew up in. One Goodreads reviewer commented that it seemed like Anne had been declawed, and that is true. Bad, Longshore, bad.Īnne was another big problem.

The fix never happened, so now I have to talk about it. I noticed it in Gilt, but dismissed it as an easy fix. I also noticed a big problem with Longshore's dialogue, and that is that she'll have some really authentic-sounding dialogue, and it really fits in well with the time period and then all of sudden modern words and phrases will jarringly appear. The overused sheep metaphor was used a lot, as well as the whole idea of being trapped and the amount of times the word tarnish (or a form of the word) appeared made me want to take a shot every time it showed up. I can tell that Longshore has a problem with repetition.

But I am seeing some writing issues that I can't write off as rookie mistakes any more. Frankly this book could have been cut down at least 100 pages and still would have made a cohesive narrative. This book was not the quick read Gilt was for me. I ended up having to finish it at 10 o'clock at night because I didn't want to carry reading it into Monday. But I didn't want to start my Valentine's Day book until it was closer to actual Valentine's Day so I pulled this book off my TBR stack and figured it would be a quick read. I wasn't expecting to read this book next.

Tarnish by Katherine Longshore