Her Highness, the Traitor by Susan Higginbotham

I received a galley of this novel from NetGalley for review. This in no way affected my opinions.


Her Highness, the Traitor opens with the death of Henry VIII and ends after the execution of Lady Jane Grey.

The book is told from the point-of-view of two women: Jane's mother Frances Grey; and Jane Dudley. The chapters went back and forth between them and the story didn't suffer for it. Admittedly, sometimes I did forget whose chapter I was on, but that may have been my own problem, seeing as I always have trouble keeping people straight with stories of this time period. It didn't help that some of the characters actually changed titles as the story went on. Oye, my poor brain.

I digress. I loved the two separate voices, and enjoyed seeing the same events from each of their perspective's. And as their lives started to cross, due to the marriage of their children, it was interesting seeing how each woman viewed the other.

I learned quite a bit from this book, because I only knew the bare bones of the legend surrounding Lady Jane Grey. I appreciated that the author leaned more towards fact than suspected fiction and biases through the centuries. I also appreciated how events weren't glossed over or sugarcoated: such as the executions. One of them was particularly upsetting, but it needed to be shown.

I'm not a big Tudor reader, but I think it's more that I tend to stay away from books surrounding Henry VIII, which is probably 95% of them.

I enjoyed this one. Definitely recommended.