Book Review: The Other Boleyn Girl

“He is my brother. She is my sister. Come what will, they are my kin.”

“I was born to be your rival,' she [Anne] said simply. 'And you mine. We're sisters, aren't we?”

"We might, either of us, be Queen of England and yet we'll always be nothing to our family.”

 (I couldn't choose one quote, so you got three!)

Can you believe that after this review and one more, I am caught up?  It's true.


This is one of those books that you spend forever thinking, "Oh, I should read that.  I aught to read that.  I really should read that," but then you don't. But, now I did.  And I don't regret it at all.

Mary Boleyn spends her life doing precisely what she is told to do.  And what she is told to do is to have the ambition of a Boleyn, or at least pretend.  As a fourteen year old girl, she begins to fall in love with her role as mistress to the dazzling Henry VIII.  But disenchantment soon sets in as she realizes that she is a powerless pawn, and this is not the life she wants.  As she falls out of favor for her other, fiery sister, Anne,  Mary gets cast off by her family as a failed plan.  But as Mary moves farther and farther away from her family's satisfaction, she moves closer and closer to her own happiness. And we're left thinking, maybe the "Other Boleyn Girl" didn't get the short end of the stick.

I was pleased with this story, and the thoughts that it had.  I especially liked its deeply personal analysis of both nobles and women in the Tudor England society, and its thoughts on actual happiness.  It was, for the most part, engagingly written, and I cared deeply about several characters (Mary, George, William, etc).  There were also several characters I did not care for, such as Anne, but she's not exactly supposed to be likeable.  I did enjoy its very intricate foray into the question of sibling rivalry--the absolute war, and abject quarreling, but also the complete devotion of sisters. 

On the down side, there will be sex.  There just will be.  It keeps it to a PG-13 (I should think), but it's there.  It also was a bit slow-going.

4 stars.


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