Two sisters fight for the love of one King. (The Other Boleyn Girl - Phillipa Gregory)

Member Name: Gemma_C

Product:	The Other Boleyn Girl - Phillipa Gregory
Date:	10/07/09 (65 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Gregory has researched the history well and turned this into an addicting read!

Disadvantages: It ends! I wanted to keep on reading...

I can see why this book is so highly rated on DooYoo (and everywhere else!) as The Other Boleyn girl is a brilliant read. This was the first book I read by Philippa Gregory and I wasn't sure what to expect at first. I do like reading historical fiction and I am quite interested in the Tudor times, however I must admit that since school I had forgotten the order of the wives of King Henry VIII and how they died completely... but I'm sure I'm not the only one!

The Other Boleyn Girl is, as you may expect, based around Anne Boleyn who King Henry married after divorcing his first wife Queen Katherine. As we all know Anne Boleyn ended up being beheaded by King Henry after she was accused of adultery and being a witch. This book is told through the eyes of Mary Boleyn, Anne's sister. It is not known the exact age of each sister however in this book Mary is placed as the younger sister to Anne.

I was gripped with this book from the start as we meet a young Mary Boleyn who is married to Sir William Carey, however it's not long before her family decide to push her towards the King and become his mistress, with the help of Anne and their brother George. I enjoyed reading about the life of living at Court, the dresses, banquets, dances and the gossiping and it really drew me to imagining what life was like living at Court under the reign of King Henry. Mary respects Queen Katherine and read often of her guilt as Henry becomes closer to Mary and shuns Katherine altogether.
Mary ends up having 2 children to Henry, Catherine and Henry (however it is not known whether this is historically correct or not) however whilst she is recovering from the birth of Henry, Mary's family decide to push Anne towards the King to keep him distracted from one of the Seymour girls, a rival to the Boleyn family. King Henry inevitably forgets all about Mary and becomes fascinated with Anne and I enjoyed reading how Mary feels about this. It doesn't seem to affect her a great deal, she enjoys visiting her children at Hever Castle at Kent in the summer months and becomes close to her husband now that she is out of Henry's attention.

The story continues with the relationship between King Henry and Anne and their struggle as they wait for King Henry to be allowed to divorce Katherine and Henry's increasing annoyance with the Pope. There is of course the struggle to give King Henry an heir, and Anne decides to adopt Mary's son Henry, which doesn't please Mary in the slightest as you can imagine! The relationship between the two sisters is complicated, whilst they are quite the rival to each other, they are also close and Mary is constantly at Anne's side, although this may be because Anne demands her to be.

As we all know Anne Boleyn does marry King Henry, and it was a good read watching the fall of Anne Boleyn along with other men of the court, accused of adultery and the ending is done wonderfully by Gregory and I just could not put this book down towards the end!

I loved the pace of this book and Gregory really did this well. We travel through many years in the book and sometimes in the book a whole summer is quickly passed over in a couple of sentences and it comes towards more important events, however this is not done badly and I felt the whole book flowed rather smoothly.
There was never a down moment for me in this book, there was always something happening to make you not want to put the book down, as we go from Mary's days with King Henry right up until the late days of Anne's marriage to the King there is never a dull moment. In fact, this book was so interesting that afterwards I ended up reading in depth on the Internet about the characters of this book and I was pleased to see Gregory stuck to so many historical facts, even including the 'Sweating Sickness' of the time and other characters who played a smaller part in the book. There are a lot of unknowns, such as whether Mary's children were King Henry's or not, however in these cases Gregory has made a firm decision about what to go with, and doesn't get other important facts wrong.

I enjoyed reading this book so much I have now received Gregory's other book The Boleyn Inheritance which I'm looking forward to reading now. I would recommend this book if you like reading stories such as Memoir of a Geisha, or if you have an interest in the Tudor times. Even if you don't, I recommend it anyway, as I personally couldn't put this down!

Summary: You will not be able to put this book down, such a brilliant read.