The King's Rose

The King's Rose by Alisa M. Libby
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The author is not a bad writer but I found the book rather naive. Everything is written from Catherine's point of view and, I guess, we can take the view that we all justify ourselves one way or another, even when we do bad things.

But I find it hard to reconcile the ingenue tone that Catherine is supposedly using when recounting what is happening with what we know of her. The author is trying to present the Catherine-Thomas Culpeper story as some great love story, while presenting Francis Dereham as some creepy guy lurking in the shadows... but the affair with Dereham lasted for years, yet during the book never it is explained what Catherine ever liked about him. She states on more than one occasion that she was above him and talks as if she never meant to marry him, but in those days intercourse with a man without even wanting to marry was a serious sin. So either she was depraved (therefore not an ingenue) - and before you jump at me for using this term, remember it was the 1540s! - or she loved him (therefore he must have had SOME redeaming qualities and a little time could have been spent on Catherine remembering, oh, how he brought her roses or something of the sort).

Also Culpeper is described as serious and dependable, but his talk of disposing of the king was insane in those days. Back then you could have been executed for just imagining that the king was going to die someday (shocker!) but talking of actually facilitating that was the quickest way to the block anyone had to take.

The plot stretches the believable (the whole family plotting adultery? after having lost a niece to the block already?).

Not very impressed.

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