I've enjoyed Alison Weir's fiction books before, but I'm really not sure what happened to this one. The marriage games were dreadfully repetitive and the 'will she, won't she' tension it seemed like Weir was trying to build was undermined by the fact that every reader knows Elizabeth doesn't marry. There was also far too much telling instead of showing when it came to Elizabeth's feelings for each of her suitors; we were told time and time again that Elizabeth feared marriage because of what had happened to her mother and step-mother, but always in overt, info-dump exposition.

Even more annoyingly, there are small glimpses of the book this one could have been - Elizabeth and William Cecil discussing their theories about Amy Dudley' death, for instance. I would much rather have had a book about that, it's so ripe for speculation which is usually what historical fiction is about. This book, on the other hand, read like a very dry non-fiction book but with made-up dialogue - oh, and the obligatory saucy bedroom scenes because this is a book about the Tudors after all.