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Review: "A Dangerous Inheritance" by Alison Weir

From Goodreads:  England's Tower of London was the terrifying last stop for generations of English political prisoners. A Dangerous Inheritance weaves together the lives and fates of four of its youngest and most blameless: Lady Katherine Grey, Lady Jane's younger sister; Kate Plantagenet, an English princess who lived nearly a century before her; and Edward and Richard, the boy princes imprisoned by their ruthless uncle, Richard III, never to be heard from again. Across the years, these four young royals shared the same small rooms in their dark prison, as all four shared the unfortunate role of being perceived as threats to the reigning monarch.

My Thoughts:  I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.  I really wanted to love this book.  Alison Weir is one of my favorite authors and I usually enjoy her books.  This time not so much.  It's not that I disliked this book, I just didn't connect with the story very well.  It was slow at times and I didn't always love the characters.  The story went back and forth between two characters:  Kate Plantagenet during Richard III's reign and Lady Katherine Grey during the Tudor era.  These two women were tied together through their interest in the fates of the 'Princes in the Tower'.

 I had a hard time feeling sympathy for Lady Katherine Grey as she was portrayed in this book.  I normally think her story is incredibly sad but she was kind of a brat and seemed to encourage Queen Mary's and Queen Elizabeth's irritation with her.  She was always dreaming of being queen herself and getting angry when she wasn't named heir which I thought was an interesting way to portray her considering what happened to her sister and father.   It was sad that she really didn't get to live her life the way she wanted but I still struggled to like her.  I also struggled with Kate Plantagenet as a character.  I definitely liked her more than Lady Grey but she was very naive and refused to acknowledge that her father behaved in an incredibly inappropriate way when he seized power for himself.  I kind of wanted to shake her and say 'Open your eyes!'.  I was sympathetic to her plight though, she was forced to marry someone who she didn't love and who didn't treat her all that well. 

The most interesting part of the story was all of the discussion of the Princes in the Tower.  Both Kate and Katherine were trying to discover what happened to them and while neither of them ever found an answer, it definitely added a very compelling mystery to this story.  I find the whole mystery surrounding the Kind Edward V and Duke Richard of York extremely fascinating so I really enjoyed those parts of the story.

Overall, this wasn't a bad book, I just feel like it could have been so much better.  There were aspects I liked and some I didn't but I am still glad I read it.  3 stars.
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  1. ShoshanahSeptember 30, 2012 at 6:23 PM

    I've loved all of Allison Weir's fiction books (I've only read a few of her non-fiction), so I can't wait to read this one. Hopefully my experience with it is better than yours was though.

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