Anne Boleyn is just a girl. As a lady in waiting to the queen she finds that she is always too smart and always has a comment that probably should have remained in her head. Her popularity swells as Thomas Wyatt helps her figure out how to gain favor and attention from the court and ultimately from the great King Henry VIII himself. She is playing with fire and knows she could be cast aside easily if she is not careful, tarnishing her reputation and all that her family has built.

It is clear from the writing that Katherine Longshore's Anne Boleyn is incredibly intelligent and does not hold back so as to appear less so when she is around men. I love her interpretation of how witty and flirtatious she is while still being entirely in control of her own fate.

let me start this one out by saying that i love english royal history, or at least am starting to love it. remember richard iii? i blame that, which is the first time english class has ever gotten me into anything. so i took out tarnish because you know, anne boleyn. and i’m not going to say i knew a lot about her before reading, and maybe that affected my experience. i looked her up on wikipedia. and i do think that she’s interesting (and it was her that caused henry i don’t know what the number is to split from the catholic church) and this book did an okay job of making her seem like it.

first of all anne is a very confident and impulsive woman. she was interesting when she spoke, but i feel like her inner voice - her narration - was rather dull. i found i had to force my way through the book. and there wasn’t much conflict or tension, either, i felt. the plot needs work. the plot needs a lot of work. perhaps it was because i just came from reading a book with high stakes, and yes, that is more of the type of the book i enjoy, but i didn’t like the plot. once again, we get a bloody love triangle. (okay, so i said, i didn’t like reading cishet romances unless they stood out … but like, i thought this would stand out.) more like a love polygon, because you’ve got the stuff with percy and then you’ve got wyatt and you know that anne ends up with the king at the end. it is a Foregone Conclusion.

maybe it was just that the type of story that longshore chose to write wasn’t my preference. i realize now i would much rather read about anne boleyn’s later life, before she was executed. i see how i would have liked it, and there were some tense parts but not enough. a lot of it was sitting around and talking, or the romance part.

what i did like was the relationship with anne and mary, and anne and jane. those were a lot better than how the romance with wyatt was portrayed. and i know that anne did get together with king henry but here, it seemed very quickly brought on and it didn’t come across as strong as i would have liked.

katherine longshore, though, is great at describing things. i could picture anne’s world, the english royal court, and i could picture the dresses and the people in it and what she was seeing. i don’t think the present tense narration worked out very well in this book, though. it works for some books and it doesn’t work for others and this was one it didn’t work for. i felt disconnected to anne even though a first person perspective, while there are books that i feel fully connected to a character even though it’s third person.

anne was a good character, though. i did like her. i think that she was portrayed as being very confident and sure of herself, and also wanting to have a voice in something. that was another thing i liked. historical queens are great and anne is one of them. she stuck out in a good way and made me like her throughout the book, even if she was a little too dependent on men for my liking. (then again this is the 16th century what am i expecting.)

i give this book a 5/10 and recommend this for anyone who likes the history of the english monarchy, or anyone who likes historical romance ( )

3.5 Stars ( )

Having been greatly impressed by Longshore’s debut novel, Gilt, I was eager to get my hands on the sequel, and thrilled when my friend April gifted me her ARC. I read it slowly over the course of weeks, snuck it in between my review commitments. While I do think Gilt held more appeal for me due to the less traveled subject matter, Longshore still brings something new to Tudor historical fiction with Tarnish.

Read the A Reader of Fictions. ( )

I received a copy of this audio for review from Penguin Audio through Audiobook Jukebox

Tarnish by Katherine Longshore was very nicely narrated by Leslie Bellair. Her voice was expressive and well paced although not overly animated allowing the reader to enjoy a very laid back narration of this historical story.

I have read just about every book about Anne Boleyn that I can find, she is such a dynamic historical figure with such a tragic story. Tarnish is unique in that some possibilities were explored that I had never considered or read in any other portrayal of her life. Reading this made me recall Susan Bordo's novel "[b:The Creation of Anne Boleyn: A New Look at England's Most Notorious Queen|15814396|The Creation of Anne Boleyn A New Look at England's Most Notorious Queen|Susan Bordo|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348098502s/15814396.jpg|16482706]" where she talks about how each generation interprets Anne in a way that fits with that time period. In this case, Anne is depicted in a manner that will appeal to young adults while still remaining very close to what is established history. Longshore's Anne Boleyn was much softer and more approachable than the haughty queen with the biting wit that she's been painted by many other fictional portrayals.

I enjoyed that Tarnish explored the possible relationship between Anne Boleyn and Thomas Wyatt. This is so well done and entirely historically plausible. Several times throughout the story, I felt a little jolt of sadness at some seemingly offhand comment by Anne or Thomas that sounds so innocuous unless you know how this story plays out.

Tarnish begins shortly after Anne's return from France and ends right as her relationship with the king is beginning. I enjoyed imagining Anne as an insecure girl thrown into a hostile court with dreams of being more than a woman of that time period can usually expect. In Anne's strained relationship with her brother and father, Tarnish puts into perspective the way women were viewed in 1500's England.

Overall, this is a wonderful read that I would highly recommend for fans of historical fiction. This is a great introduction to Anne Boleyn for anyone who only knows her as the tragic queen of Henry VIII. And for those who are very familiar with Anne's story, this is a fascinating fresh perspective. ( )