The White Queen by Philippa Gregory (Book Review)

The White Queen by Philippa Gregory

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This started out disturbingly like a trashy romance. (I saw another reviewer refer to this genre as Historical Harlequin, which is awesome.) It straightened out, thankfully, or I wouldn’t have kept reading. I loathe bodice-ripper and sappy-kissy stuff.

I also require a goodly amount of real history with my historical fiction, and Gregory has always come through on that score. This was an entertaining read although not on a level with The Other Boleyn Girl or her story of Kateryn Parr. Many passages seemed padded with a lot of repetition for dramatic effect, and I didn’t feel the urgency in this book as I have in others. Still, I enjoyed her characterization of Elizabeth Woodville, the ancestress of all British royalty for the last 600 years beginning with Elizabeth of York. There’s no Mary Sue here! I liked the addition of magic but I have to wonder that any woman would freely bandy the word “witch” about with reference to herself. Wasn’t that pretty much a death sentence? Her treatment of the mystery of the Princes in the Tower was different than the usual.

Not Gregory’s best, but it still did a good job of keeping me turning the pages.

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