The White Queen

The White Queen by Philippa Gregory
I've read almost everything by Philippa Gregory and enjoy her books, so of course I was going to her new book. Plus the book takes place during the War of the Roses, which is a time period I've read about quite a bit and enjoy reading more about. The book is about Elizabeth Woodville who married King Edward IV of the York line and became Queen of England. Its interesting because out of all the books I've read from this time period Elizabeth has never been on of the main characters. Instead she's always portrayed in a bad light, that she was a witch and somewhat undeserving of her status.

I think partly because of my background of her character I wasn't a big fan of Elizabeth. But I also don't think the character was written to make you fall in love with her. Elizabeth made a lot of decisions that weren't the smartest in her life, and I'm not sure you could write about her in a sense to truly make people fall in love with her.

I did say I've read a good amount of this time period, which is helpful because its a confusing time period. Its taken me a while to fully understand who all the key players are, and even so I can still get confused trying to figure out who is who and how they're all related. Therefore, if this is the first book you read that take place during the War of the Roses, its a given you'll get confused at some point with all the politics in the book.

Overall, I'd enjoyed it, although there hasn't been a book by Philippa Gregory I haven't enjoyed. In general, her books do veer away from some historical facts, but she is at least honest about that in her afterward. If you haven't read any of her books I'd say you might be safer starting out with The Other Boleyn Girl or The Queen's Fool. But if you do enjoy her books and historical fiction, this is a really interesting time period to read about, especially if you haven't read about the War of the Roses before. Some pretty unbelievable things happened during this time period, several times power shifted between on King and another, there's war between cousins, war between brothers, and most famously this is when the two princes disappeared in the Tower of London. Quite a page turned considering its actual history!

~Shoshanah