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Title: Fatal Throne
Authors: MT Anderson, Candace Fleming, Stephanie Hemphill, Jennifer Donnelly, Lisa Ann Sandell, Linda Sue Park, Deborah Hopkinson
Sub-genre: Historical fiction
Alright. This was an interesting one. I picked it up at the bookstore one day and added it to my pile based solely on the cover and the tagline “The wives of Henry VIII tell all”. I’ve been a fan of the wives for many years, as I was a late teen/early twenty in the years of The Other Boleyn Girl and The Tudors on HBO. So I gravitate toward anything based on these characters (they really do feel like characters at this point). It wasn’t until I put the book on my TBR that I realized it’s actually an anthology of stories. I don’t know that I would have bought it if I had realized that from the beginning, but que sera sera.
The stories are told in order of wives, with each author taking a different wife. In between each wife’s chapter is a chapter from Henry, written by another one of the authors. Despite Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn having the more interesting stories (in my opinion), I actually found theirs the least interesting to read. I really liked Anna of Cleves and Kateryn Parr’s stories the most, and I was into the Henry chapters too. I thought the Henry chapters in particular really gave great insight into what a complete narcissist he was, justifying all of his terrible actions because he literally thinks he is god’s gift to earth.
While I liked reading most of the stories for the most part, some tried to do too much and some did too little. I wanted there to be more consistency on the focus (like are we looking at wedding days or the end of the relationships, or the times when they actually felt like they were in love). But everything felt a little disjointed. Overall, it was worth the read, but not something I would go back to again and again, despite my love of the subject matter.
Overall Rating: 4 stars