The Other Boleyn Girl: A Novel Review

My biggest gripe with this book is that the reader is beaten over the head with the theme that a woman's life was not her own to make life decisions.  The main characters, George, Anne, and Mary Boleyn appear to have some form of this conversation throughout the first half of the book.  Then Mary and her Uncle Howard have a different version of the conversation several more times.  It got to the point that I was rolling my eyes each time the author compares Mary to a brood mare, or as a prize won at gambling, a pawn, or whatever metaphor du jour the author fancied to repeat the same point.  Okay, we get it - women were not treated as equals.  Can we move on now?

Thankfully, the author does move on with the story at the point my attention began to flag.  She does a great job of contrasting and comparing Anne's rise and downfall to that of her predecessor, Queen Catherine of Aragon.  I felt that I learned more about the politics of living in a royal court and I breathed a sigh of relief each time Mary was able to spend time away in the simple life of the country.  The build up to the execution of Anne Boleyn is fraught with urgency and anxiety, but I felt that something was missing in the final pages.   The downside of the novel taking place through Mary's eyes is that we don't get much information as to Anne's state of mind in her final days.  And that, for me, is a let down.

Overall, I give a slight nod of recommendation to The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory.  There is a lot of interesting reading in the novel to recommend it, but there is also monotony and a lackluster ending, in my opinion.