Review
Thank you to Sourcebooks Landmark for an arc of this book.
First off, Susanna Kearsley remains one of my favorite historical fiction writers. She is so good at what she does that I get absolutely engrossed in her books and it’s so hard for me to put them down.
One of the the things she does so well is combines excellent research with her own imagination, and it brings both the real historical characters to life as well as the ones she invents for her books. In this case, the characters presented in this story were so well written.
An aspect of this story I really liked was the “mystery” surrounding the Prince’s death, but I also loved that the main characters weren’t just the royals. We get a lot of historical fiction focusing on the royals, but Susanna brings to light the people who weren’t royals as well.
I really loved her author’s note at the end of the book, it is a worthwhile read because it explains many of the excellent choices that she made in the process of writing this book.
Phoebe’s growth throughout this book was incredible, because I feel like she mimicked the arc of how English people saw the Scottish after James came to the throne – lesser, savages, barbarians. Such as the story David relates about how the Romans viewed the Picts/Scots.
There were multiple meanings throughout this book, and I loved the themes it dealt with.
If you love historical fiction with a bit of second sight, of political intrigue and adventure, you absolutely need to add this book to your TBR. Susanna Kearsley does such an excellent job bringing the historical world to ours.