Lexi

I love Anne of Cleves, but I just couldn't get into this book. The parts that featured Henry VIII weren't very interesting, and of course it's a book about his wives so he's in it quite a few times. I liked the invention of a hopeless love between court painter Hans Holbein and Anne. I just gave up reading. It's not boring, exactly, it's just... not intriguing, I guess? I'm not sure. I read books before I go to bed and I found I was putting off going to bed so I wouldn't have to read the book. It's not BAD. I'm sure for readers in 1952 who didn't have a wealth of other, more exciting Tudor fiction it was pretty good.
Also my copy (published in 1952!) was full of typos and there's some occasionally confusing sentence structure, so I'd have to go back and reread something three times to figure out who was talking. Like it would say “...he said” but the dialogue sounded like it should've been said by Anne.

I mean I love reading but it took me a month to get through 40 pages. My recommendation is to check it out of a library if possible, don't buy unless you can get it for super cheap.

Also this isn't really a review, but the cover for the 1952 version is hilarious - we all know approximately what Anne looked like because of a few paintings of her, but the 1952 cover features a 1950s-style pinup of an almost blue-skinned woman with shoulder-length black hair and curved bangs. Looks absolutely nothing like Anne of Cleves, it's actually pretty funny.

A very quaint story. The characters were interesting, and I appreciated that it didn't fall in the trap of “literally everyone in town immediately loves the charming newcomer.” Even by the end of the book, there was a number of characters who had no particular interactions with Mrs. Hollis. The characters were all interesting without being “small town quirky.” There's so many characters that most of them don't really have a moment to BE “small town quirky,” so they come off more as regular people.
Remarkably, this book is set in England but is by an American author, and it feels pretty authentic. There's a few word choices here and there that maybe wouldn't be accurate to 1860s England, but nothing sticks out as an egregious Americanism - at least to me, an American.
I had no idea going into this book that it was so... religious? I mean, it's really not all that overwhelming. The characters praying to God and such makes perfect sense given the setting. The main religious aspect comes from one character being sort of wheedled into studying the Bible. It's a long process, during which that character brings up a lot of interesting points. In my opinion his conversion was sort of sudden, but it wasn't all that bad.

My biggest complaint is the writing for the teen characters seems REALLY off. One of the main characters is 13 for most of the book, and then 14, but I kept imagining he was more like 10 or 11 because of how he was behaving. I can't really pinpoint what was so off about it - it's not as if I was expecting him to be thinking about girls constantly, but a 14 year old who just goes fishing all the time and doesn't protest at all to his mother tucking him in at night? That just seemed really odd.

All in all, an enjoyable book. 4 stars because I enjoyed reading it but I'm not totally sure I'll read it again. I will say that this entire book series would be great for some light PBS tv series.

Great book! I read it just for an easy read, so I was surprised by how much depth there is. Punches aren't pulled at all (four characters die! One almost does!) while keeping things perfectly appropriate for a young reader. The main message is really that things aren't what they appear to be - everyone has secrets, people you think are mean can be reasonable if given the chance.
I wish they'd made a sequel! I would love to read more adventures about Cecile. It's a shame the company canceled this line.
Despite being an adult and this book being aimed more for 12 year olds, I really enjoyed it. It's quite a quick read (partly due to the font choice and size of the pages), and it doesn't feel dumbed down just because it's for pre-teens. It doesn't get graphic or inappropriate, but the overall message is pretty pleasantly mature (as I said, “things aren't always what they seem”). Definitely recommend.

The accompanying doll is pretty scary, though. I mean the dress for the doll is gorgeous, but the doll's face creeped me out. That doesn't affect my star rating, though.

This was such a weirdly uneven book. Parts of it would be written really well, intriguing, great read. Other parts, not so much. Right off the bat I noticed this odd quirk where a bunch of characters would start a sentence with “Well,”. It would happen so many times on one page! Other phrases would get repeated within like 3 paragraphs of each other. Very noticeable. Then there'd be a lot of nothing really happening.

I completely understand as a historical fiction account of a historical person you obviously have to stick to the script, so to speak, so of course things like Sisi NOT standing up to her aunt/mother-in-law at 16 makes sense even though it's frustrating. The author explains in the end that certain people were excluded from the narrative because they weren't really relevant to Sisi, but it's still extremely odd to me that not once did Franz Joseph's father ever get mentioned even though he was alive during the timeframe of this book. Did Sisi seriously have no thoughts at all about her father-in-law, the man married to her biggest enemy (Sophie)? Or her siblings - the beginning of the book involves Sisi figuring out how to stand up against her younger brother and then all the things she does in order to make her sister Helene look good, and then after Sisi gets married her siblings get mentioned like twice. We don't even get to see her at her childhood home as an adult, interacting with her family, we just get told that she went there and it was fine until her mother told her to leave. There's also absolutely no mention of Sisi's older brother, and sure I don't expect him to be part of the narrative because he didn't seem to have much to do with Sisi's life as empress, but it would seem like SOMEONE mentioning the disgraced oldest brother who abdicated his position as heir at some point would've made sense, especially with the overall idea of duty and commitment?

I also didn't really find the second falling in love part very convincing. Sisi hates Andrassy and then basically just doesn't hate him anymore one time? Because she likes Hungary?? There's not really anything shown that made me convinced of their love, other than that Sisi appreciated SOMEONE finally talking to her about politics.

Overall it just felt like the book was uneven in terms of quality. One chapter would be great, and then one would be amateurish and repetitive. After 490 pages I ultimately don't feel like I really KNOW any of the people in the book. I don't have a good feel for why Franz Joseph is so tolerant of Sophie - yes she's his mother and yes she helped get him where he is, but but is he so fine with her basically acting as the empress and bullying his wife that he loves so much? Why was Helene so meek and wanting to be a nun? Why was Sisi so... everything? I do want to read the sequel, hopefully the writing quality will be improved.

Oh boy was this a disappointment. I pretty much devoured Graceling, and liked Fire all right, so I was expecting to enjoy this book. Nope!

Among the problems in this book:
The romance subplot adds nothing - unlike in Graceling and Fire. Bitterblue doesn't seem to learn about herself or grow as a person, the romance subplot seems to just teach her that kissing is nice.
Nobody ever said anything with a personality - it felt like every other line, someone was saying something either blandly or dryly. That really grinds on your nerves after a while!
The sort of overall plot - people recovering from mind control while Bitterblue discovers there are parts of the castle she's never been in - didn't really make sense given the, what, 8 year in-universe gap between this book and Graceling. I get the mind control fog was thick, but, come on. 8 years and people are still recovering?? Bitterblue's almost 18 and had no idea there was an art gallery in her home??
The TOTALLY pointless Gracelings. Okay, not every Grace has to be super interesting or super useful. But did we really have to waste page space meeting a kitchen employee who has a Grace where he can smell people and know what food they'd find most desirable at that moment? He never comes up again, and the Grace is pointless (just ask people what they want!), and it was kind of annoying.
The whole “there's nothing wrong with being gay” thing. To be clear, I'm not objecting to the message. Just, it doesn't make any sense in-universe. We don't hear of any religions that forbid homosexual relationships, and we don't hear that any of the kings have banned it, we don't hear of ANY reason in-universe why people would feel like they need to hide their same-sex relations and why Bitterblue is all “Good, I'm happy, they shouldn't have to hide it.”

The best part of this book in my opinion was Po playing with a paper airplane outside and then falling off the little stone wall. Not that I was happy he fell, it was just a cute, funny moment in a book full of bland pointlessness. I mean, maybe that scene was also pointless, but at least it was cute.