The Queen's Husband

Good classic historical romance novel! It's not strictly historically accurate (William is purported to have had one mistress, but she is not mentioned by name in this book. Mary mentions William doesn't wear wigs, but he certainly at least wore them in the portraits that exist. In real life Mary apparently had a miscarriage within a year of their marriage, but not only does the book not mention Mary having miscarriages at all, it's certainly not possible she could've had one within a year of getting married in this book), but it's a pretty excellent highlights version of history.

I found the beginning before Mary was introduced to be slow, although I did enjoy the reveal that an angry mob killed and partially ate two of the politicians which apparently possibly happened in real life! (there's no way to know FOR SURE if it really did happen or if it was just an exaggeration or metaphor). I don't know, the idea that a bunch of people got fed up of how their politicians were treating them so they killed and ate the politicians was kind of encouraging.

Besides that, the beginning part of the book was dull, but maybe I just don't like passages about battle tactics, signing documents, and disagreeing with France. The plot picked up when Mary finally arrived in the narrative. The warfare in the end of the book wasn't as boring to me as the beginning part.

This is a very clean book. There's mentions of people dying, but no gory descriptions. Sex occurs entirely offscreen. There's a lot of “He took her in his arms and she knew he was going to make love to her” types of descriptions that then cut to later. The most, ahem, titillating passage was a mention that a character was fondling a woman's breasts. That is the description, there's nothing saucier or more detailed than what I said.

As far as I know the internal descriptions of fashions and furniture are accurate for the time period. Don't be fooled by the cover featuring a woman who's clearly wearing mascara and purple eyeshadow. Other than William and apparently Mary not wearing wigs nothing stuck out to me as period inaccurate (and I don't know enough about them - like i said he's clearly bewigged in the portraits of him, but I don't know if in their regular non-portrait lives if they both sported their natural hair rather than wigs).

All in all, I enjoyed this book! It's not a book I plan to keep in my collection for the rest of my life, but it's one that I wouldn't mind if I had to read it again.