BOOK REVIEW: The Kiss of the Concubine by Judith Arnopp

Blurb:

28th January 1547.

It is almost midnight and the cream of the English nobility hold their breath as King Henry VIII prepares to face his God. As the royal physicians wring their hands and Archbishop Cranmer gallops through the frigid night, two dispossessed princesses pray for their father’s soul and a boy, soon to be king, snivels into his velvet sleeve. 

Time slows, and dread settles around the royal bed, the candles dip and something stirs in the darkness … something, or someone, who has come to tell the king it is time to pay his dues. 

The Kiss of the Concubine is the story of Anne Boleyn, second of Henry VIII’s queens. 

My Review:

“The Kiss of the Concubine” by Judith Arnopp was an outstanding read! I absolutely love anything that has to do with Anne Boleyn, and this was definitely right at the top of the list of books I’ve read about her life. I love that the focus was on the positive side of Anne Boleyn.  A lot of books focus  on her ambition, and make her out to be some evil woman, who purposefully went after King Henry VIII with the goal of becoming queen, and that she never loved him, just wanted the crown. This novel gives reader another view of Anne Boleyn. It shows her as a young woman who fell very much in love with King Henry VIII, and although she felt guilty because of what was happening to the king’s wife, Catherine of Aragon, she also was so in love with the king that she really wanted to be with him as his wife. She refused to be his mistress, because she did not want to end up like her sister, who was set aside and forgotten as soon as she became pregnant with the king’s child.

This novel was an easy read, really smooth flowing and interesting. You would think that I would get bored of reading books about Anne Boleyn, but every book about her is different and interesting in its own way. I always learn something new about her life, or get a different look at what she may have been thinking or what she may have gone through.

I would definitely recommend this novel to any historical fiction lovers, especially those who are as obsessed with Tudor history as I am!

I give this novel a FIVE out of FIVE stars!

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