The Other Boleyn Girl
Books | Fiction / General
3.9
(1.6K)
Philippa Gregory
Two sisters competing for the greatest prize: the love of a king. When Mary Boleyn comes to court as an innocent girl of fourteen, she catches the eye of Henry VIII. Dazzled by the king, Mary falls in love with both her golden prince and her growing role as unofficial queen. However, she soon realizes just how much she is a pawn in her family's ambitious plots as the king's interest begins to wane and she is forced to step aside for her best friend and rival: her sister, Anne. Then Mary knows that she must defy her family and her king, and take her fate into her own hands A rich and compelling tale of love, sex, ambition, and intrigue, Other Boleyn Girl introduces a woman of extraordinary determination and desire who lived at the heart of the most exciting and glamorous court in Europe and survived by following her own heart.
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Author
Philippa Gregory
Pages
735
Publisher
Simon and Schuster
Published Date
2007
ISBN
1416556532 9781416556534
Ratings
Google: 5
Community ReviewsSee all
"I’ve read this book so much that the spine is broken in a few places and lays open by itself. The movie…meh. This book focuses more on Mary than the movie does, which focuses too much on Ann. "
A A
Alyssa Abram
"I loved this book... the movie not so much."
J
Jess
"I've wanted to read this for a long time. I'm not sure why I didn't before now, but I got an email from goodreads with a great price so I bought it without a second glance. Then I started reading. If there is one thing I got out of this book, it's that I'm glad I was never apart of the Tudor court. Nor a Howard or Boleyn girl. Or any girl of notable birth, really. I couldn't imagine a life that wasn't truly my own.<br/><br/>I know this is dramatized for the sake of the readers, but I can't imagine this being too far off the mark. Anne was just as I thought of her. Calculating. What I hadn't truly thought of was the fear. The fear of the unknown. How can one little baby change things so dramatically? <br/><br/>I'm not a historian, but some things fascinate me. One of them is King Henry VIII and his obsession with a male heir. The lengths he will go through to get an heir are staggering. When he should have been remembered for other things, this will be the only thing he is remembered for. For the most part.<br/><br/>Mary. This is all told through her eyes. I'm not sure if she really did find true love. I know there are differences in the book versus in life. I'm glad, after everything she had to witness, endure, cover up or was forced into by her father and uncle, that she finally found love. True love. That she didn't settle for whatever plans her family had for her and she seized it herself.<br/><br/>I've watched this movie. I've watched the Tudor series. The one thing I wasn't expecting was to grieve with Mary over the loss of her brother. He was someone I always found to be weaselly and never had any real thoughts of. But through Mary's eyes, I was sad. She loved him. In all her time as mistress and then lady to her sister queen, she had her brother to guide and help her. Her sister Ann was self serving and conceited, which made it easy to not like her. It made it easy to see the kind of man that King Henry VIII might have been. The madman that was relentless in his pursuit of a boy."
"Truth be told, I am not even sure what to say about this book at the moment other than I am exhausted by reading it. It was a marathon of a story, to say the least. And that's not to say I didn't enjoy it, just that it is a remarkable effort by the author to encompass 15 years of British history in the span of 600 pages. And that's with personal dynamics and drama included! Overall, I would say I liked the book, but was expecting more. I wanted to be riveted, not merely intrigued throughout to an ending I already knew. And I suppose that's the struggle with historical fiction as a whole. Anyone who reads it (except maybe those select few individuals who live a under rock) knows exactly how the story ends, because hello, it's already happened. And I suppose that is the great struggle with writing historical fiction; you have to make something that everyone knows about different and exciting. I am a great fan of the genre myself, though I have discovered as I have gotten older that I would almost rather read about the history itself than a fictional take on it. This attitude played a rather large role in why I didn't love this book as much as I thought, because I find the Tudors fascinating in their own right. But to sum it up, if you're up for it, read it, and I hope you enjoy it."
A P
Allie Peduto
"I love musicals and recently got into one called Six. So this ties into the book as these two sisters Anne Boleyn and Mary Boleyn are both ladies in power. Which one is told to seduce the king, but in the book you can tell one sister has more up her sleeve than the other... I highly recommend as it's really interesting with each page you read."
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