Review: To Die For: A Novel of Anne Boleyn by Sandra Byrd

★ ★ ★ ★ 1/2

Book Source: I received a copy in exchange for a fair and honest review.
Release Date: August 9^th, 2011

Synopsis: To Die For, is the story of Meg Wyatt, pledged forever as the best friend to Anne Boleyn since their childhoods on neighboring manors in Kent. When Anne’s star begins to ascend, of course she takes her best friend Meg along for the ride. Life in the court of Henry VIII is thrilling at first, but as Anne’s favor rises and falls, so does Meg’s. And though she’s pledged her loyalty to Anne no matter what the test, Meg just might lose her greatest love—and her own life—because of it.  

Meg's childhood flirtation with a boy on a neighboring estate turns to true love early on. When he is called to follow the Lord and be a priest she turns her back on both the man and his God. Slowly, though, both woo her back through the heady times of the English reformation. In the midst of it, Meg finds her place in history, her own calling to the Lord that she must follow, too, with consequences of her own. Each character in the book is tested to figure out what love really means, and what, in this life, is worth dying for.

Though much of Meg’s story is fictionalized, it is drawn from known facts. The Wyatt family and the Boleyn family were neighbors and friends, and perhaps even distant cousins. Meg’s brother, Thomas Wyatt, wooed Anne Boleyn and ultimately came very close to the axe blade for it. Two Wyatt sisters attended Anne at her death, and at her death, she gave one of them her jeweled prayer book—Meg.

Review: When being asked to review this book I must admit I was a little hesitant in saying yes because the first thought that crossed my mind was “Here we go again, another Anne Boleyn novel. It’s going to be the same story but a different author.” However, I was pleasantly surprised that although it was the same story of Anne Boleyn it was told in a completely unique way. 

What made this novel unique and refreshing was how Sandra told Anne’s story through the eyes of her best friend and confidante, Meg Wyatt. I absolutely loved Meg’s character! What drew me in was her constant struggle between her love for the hansom Will Ogilvy and her devotion to Anne. Meg was in love with a man who believed he had been called by God to help translate and print the first English version of the Bible, which was considered heresy in the eyes of King Henry VIII. 

What I loved most about this book was how Sandra truly made this story her own. She captured another side of Anne Boleyn that most people refused to believe about her. She painted a beautiful picture of Anne as being a strong confidant woman who happened to fall in love with a man who had narcissistic behavior, which caused her downfall. Sandra’s new rendition of this story made me fall in love with Anne Boleyn all over again. I enjoyed getting to know Meg Wyatt and her struggles through life. This is a remarkable new twist on Anne’s story and I enjoyed every minute of it! Highly recommended to all Tudor enthusiasts out there!

If you would like a chance to read Sandra Byrd's novel To Die For make sure you stop by tomorrow for a chance to win a copy!

Guest Post: Robert Parry author of The Arrow Chest

 Hey everyone! Please welcome Robert Parry, author of The Arrow Chest, to ATHF! Read my 4 1/2 star review of this book and don't forget to sign up for a chance to win a copy of The Arrow Chest. Click here to read and sign up!

Thank you Taylor for the opportunity to tell your readers about my new novel, ‘The Arrow Chest.’

When we look back to the year 1536 and to the execution of Henry VIII’s second wife, Anne Boleyn, we are faced with one of the most bizarre and puzzling questions of English history. Why, after her death was her body (and head) placed in an old arrow chest and buried, unmarked, beneath the floor of the Chapel in of the Tower of London? How strange! That a Queen of England should be treated with such disrespect. Hardly a dignified burial!

An arrow chest in Tudor times was a large wooden box for storing arrows, but also for housing long-bow staves - sufficient in size, therefore, to be able to take a body. It was made of elm wood and might have been decorated or inlayed in some way according to the status of its owner.

Arrows were significant to the Tudors not only as weaponry, but because they were also used for the hunting of deer and wild boar - a pastime reserved for the aristocracy at the time - and the symbolism of the hunt and the ‘chase’ often became associated with courtly romance and sexual desire. Henry, for example, in one of his love-letters to Anne Boleyn mentions being struck by Cupid’s dart! Cupid is not just the chubby little rascal with the bow that we find on Valentine cards – he was regarded as an important classical figure, wound up in the myth of Daphne and Apollo, and we find him mentioned frequently in the poetry of Sir Thomas Wyatt – a handsome, gifted man whom Henry always perceived (rightly or wrongly, we shall never know) as a rival for Anne Boleyn’s affections. 

Being learned and educated in the classics was important in Tudor times. Henry certainly liked to think of himself as a ‘Renaissance man’ in this respect, fluent in Greek and Roman mythology. He liked to identify himself with the archer-god Apollo, master of poetry and music, sports and games - an ideal allegorical figure for the still-young and athletic king of England at the time of his marriage to Anne Boleyn. During Anne’s coronation there was even a special tableau designed by the great artist of the Tudor court, Hans Holbein, located on the procession route and in which Henry was depicted as the god Apollo seated on a throne surrounded by the Muses.

Which brings me to my story. Without giving too much away, it is a kind of Tudor love triangle, only moved forward in time to the 19th century and to the gloriously extravagant neo-Gothic culture of Victorian England. This time shift is perhaps not so odd as it might at first seem. The Victorian age had many parallels to that of the Tudors. There were plenty of powerful men at large – ‘kings’ in their own right. There were beautiful elegant women, and there were the fabulous poets and painters of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. So it was not difficult to find surrogates for Anne, Henry and for Thomas Wyatt in that kind of environment. The Victorians in the 19th century, moreover, had to endure their very own crises in faith, similar to the experience of the 16th century Reformation, with the arrival of Darwin’s theory of evolution and the threat this held for the established Church at the time.

So there you have it! The story opens in 1876, the year in which the skeletal remains of Anne Boleyn first came to light during a renovation project in the Chapel of St Peters ad Vincula at the Tower of London. It is a Tudor story - only moved forward a few centuries to become a gothic tale of mystery and intrigue.

Thank you Robert for taking the time to stop by and talk with us today! If this sounds like a book you would enjoy reading click here to sign up for the chance to win a copy! Giveaway open to US & Canada residents only and end

Feb. 10th.

Review: The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn by Robin Maxwell

The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn by Robin Maxwell

★★★ 1/2
 Synopsis: Elizabeth is 25 years old and has just been crowned Queen of England. She was third in line to succeed the English throne after her half brother Edward and half sister Mary who later became known as, “Bloody Mary.”

It’s becoming essential for Elizabeth to take a husband. Whether he is foreign or English it does not matter, but her counselors beseech her to choose at once. This constant annoyance by her counselors outrages Elizabeth and she refuses to hear another word of it. This worries them for they know she only has eyes for her horsemaster and lifelong companion, Robert Dudley.

Elizabeth is completely besotted by Robert. They’ve been lifelong friends since childhood. It is completely apparent that there is something going on between the two of them and her ladies maid, Kat Ashley, begs her to quit with this nonsense for she knows she can never marry him for he is already married and she is the Queen.

Elizabeth always believed herself to be her father’s daughter. Her mother, Anne Boleyn, was said to be a traitoress and was an accused witch, which cost her, her head. It was for those reasons that Elizabeth had no love for her mother. She felt her own life was tainted by her mother’s traitoress memory.

One day an old woman came begging for an audience with the Queen and out of curiosity Elizabeth agreed. The old woman by the name of Lady Matilda Sommervile claimed she attended her mother, Anne Boleyn, at the time of her death. She told Elizabeth that Anne gave her the diary to pass on to her daughter if she one day claims the throne. Full of mixed emotions, Elizabeth takes the tattered leather diary and thanks Lady Sommerville.

Anne’s diary contained all her secret thoughts, memories, and desires during most of her adulthood. As Elizabeth read through her mother’s diary she began to soften towards her mother. She realized how much her mother truly loved her and how she fought until her last breath to sustain Elizabeth’s rights as England’s rightful princess.

Review: This book was just okay. Going into it I really didn’t know what to expect. The book was primarily Anne Boleyn’s diary entries one right after another. I found myself wanting it to rotate back to Elizabeth’s perspective just so I could have a little break from the diary entries. I began to stop paying attention to the dates for each entry because they became distracting to the story and they would skipped around a lot.

On a better note, Robin Maxwell did an excellent job staying true to the facts. It was plain as day that she did her homework, which I must applaud. It was nice to read a Tudor novel written through Anne’s eyes instead of someone else’s so that you could get to know her better and see that she wasn’t the cold-hearted person she was made out to be.

I give this book a 3 ½ out of 5 stars because it wasn’t really a page turner for me and I kept looking at my TBR pile wishing I could start a new one. I recommend this book to someone who wants a light read about Anne Boleyn in order to get the facts. It’s not the novel that you want to curl up by the fire and lose yourself in. I’m definitely still a diehard Maxwell fan just not too wild about this one though.