Dark Aemilia

This story gets off to a rocky start. Aemilia Bassano is not very interesting as a privileged court lady who is the mistress of the Lord Chamberlain in late Elizabethan England. She insists she's smarter and more educated than all the other women except Elizabeth herself, but she just comes across as spoiled and bratty. I had a hard time caring about her until she was married off to a shiftless court musician because she'd gotten pregnant. Everyone assumes it's the Lord Chamberlain's child, but actually it's William Shakespeare's–she's been secretly having a torrid affair with him.

Hardship makes Aemilia a lot more interesting. Her struggle to keep herself and her child clothed and fed in spite of her husband's irresponsibility, and her private struggle to be taken seriously as a writer, make her very appealing. Details of life in Elizabethan London are fascinating (this book comes with a bibliography of sources for that detail), and there IS a touch of the supernatural in the story, although not as much as you would think from the publisher's blurb.