The Forbidden Queen by Anne O'Brien

This is the last of my book wins from the past few months, part of me hopes the last for a while to give me a chance to catch up a bit! Anyway, this is a copy of 'The Forbidden Queen' by Anne O'Brien, another historical romance, so should be enjoyable!

Value: £7.99
2013 Total: £303.21

Update: I thoroughly enjoyed this. It was well written with vivid descriptions of the historical period, and the characters were all very distinctive. I thought Katherine, the main character, could be a little annoying and naive at times - but I suppose that's a sign of a lifelike and realistic person, so not something to actually complain about, but something to congratulate the author on.

The romance aspect was very well done, but I felt the story dragged on at the end. Anne O'Brien seemed to want to catalogue Katherine's entire life, and so the last few chapters were a rushed version of her last few years and they seemed a bit unnecessary. I felt the story could have ended a bit sooner, and a page of facts at the end would have sufficed for the rest.
That being said, overall I thought the whole book was excellent. O'Brien is advertised as being 'better than Phillipa Gregory' and I would have to agree - I felt that this book was a lot easier to read than Gregory's work as there were less lengthy descriptions to sift through, and I would certainly choose to read more of her fiction in the future.