Review: The Boleyn Secret

The Boleyn Secret by Alison Weir
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Narrated by Rosalyn Landor
Presented by RB Media

DNF @ 66%

Bailing on this one. Just kinda bored with it! The historical stuff is interesting but Kate has become an incredibly dull character and there are exactly zero secrets here.

The story begins with Kate, niece to the queen Anne Boleyn, being sent to her side while Anne awaits death. What follows is an express lesson on the history of Henry VIII's wives and their various endings, with very little of note to report. Then it kind of devolves into Kate's personal life which is dull as dishwater, and by the time I gave up it was starting to veer into the topic of religious unrest.

I just stopped caring for anything, and realised it was not something I was excited to keep listening to. The narrator does a decent job but the content just doesn't have a lot going for it.

With a title suggestive of a big secret, this had nothing that wasn't easily predictable and immediately brushed to the side in favour of other issues. Incredibly disappointing on that front, and a dire lack of secrets anywhere else in the book.

It does give a crash course in history at the time, so fans of historical fiction may get a kick out of that aspect. But the story itself doesn't have enough to draw you in and make you really feel anything for anyone. I don't know that I could recommend it for anything other than the historical points of interest.

With thanks to NetGalley for an audio ARC

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