Suzi

It's clear this is incredibly well researched, and a lot of this was interesting, but it was SO detailed (about the fair and its construction) it became dry and tedious by the end.

There was far less about Holmes, which was the more interesting side of the book, but I imagine there is less known factually about him and his deeds.

I was a bit confused about why these 2 threads were even in the same book, there's no link between Holmes' killings and the World Fair apart from being in the same city at the same time.

From the amount of good things I've heard about this I expected more, but it was overly long and a bit dry for my liking.

😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

Those are happy tears. I promise.

Honestly this was a 4 star for the vast majority then the last 30 pages and the journal just made my heart full. I just loved this.

I'm fairly obsessed with history so any chance I get to learn about a new person or time in history I'll take it and inhale it.

So on the one hand I enjoyed learning about Lucrezia and her short life, however I really struggled with the way this was written.

Another review summed my thoughts up perfectly - "the plot got lost in all the symbolism".

When the plot was plotting I was so into this, then it would veer off for pages and pages about paintings and animals and other things, which I sort of got the symbolism of those things but it was just SO much that it took away from the story.

It may just be the authors style (this is my first from her so I'm not sure) but there was some odd ways of describing events, saying something like "later she would recall that they did x, y and z" but it was in the middle of scene, instead of just adding a scene set later recalling the event. It was so jarring and stopped the flow of the narrative.

I ended up switching to audio part way through this and I'm glad I did, the narrator (Genevieve Gaunt) was great and I'm not sure I would have persevered if I hadn't.

I've been a long time fan of Philippa Gregory and the way she tells her stories and this one was as good as many others.

I love how connected we get to these people, even when there's actually very little known factually from history, just like Jaquetta.

As usual the monarchy are the worst ones and I really couldn't deal with Margaret (of Anjou) by the end.

I will say this was way too long, it could have been less than 400 pages and been perfect.

I also now feel I need to reread The White Queen as I've read them all out of order. 🙈