At eight years old, Jane Popyncourt is brought to England by her mother under mysterious circumstances and is awarded a place as a child of honour in the entourage of the children of King Henry VII. As she grows up, she starts to question her place and tries to discover just what secrets her family and the Tudor Court have hidden from her...

Sounds like it should be an interesting read, right? I certainly hoped so, especially as I'd read some good reviews. And it's based on a real person; Jane really was a lady at the Court of Henry VII. But I'm afraid there are very few redeeming features in this book for me. The story feels like it's stretched too thin; it's not fast paced, but where it takes place over an extended period of time it barely skims the surface of character or plot. The 'twists' are entirely predictable and the actual 'mystery' about what forced Jane's mother to leave France in the first place is incredibly dull and, if you're not paying attention, actually quite hard to follow!

The writing came across as clunky and awkward; in trying to maintain the period feel of the prose, the author has made some choices which detracted even further from what little engagement I had. I do appreciate that names and titles during the Tudor period can get confusing, but there is no need to repeat a character's full name and title each almost every time they appear. And while using period words is absolutely fine, it felt like the author picked a couple and used them at every opportunity, 'mayhap' being the worst culprit.

I will admit that, with the cover, the series title and the book title being what they are, plus the setting and the fashion that surrounds this style of book, I was expecting a little bit of spice. But unfortunate you cannot judge this book by its cover. There are a couple of allusions to the act, and a very brief open door scene that has basically no detail, and that's it. While it's not a necessary feature for any book, when you pick up one expecting a little bit of "the good stuff", to find it so sorely lacking is really disappointing!

I did listen to the audio version, which also didn't help; having someone else interpret the writing for me on this occasion just exacerbated the above  issues. The narrator sounds like she's reading from a script she's never seen before; there are moments that are completely robotic, and her over-enunciation of every word makes her sound like an AI being. It's not without inflection and tone, but it just sounds 'fake'. Her attempts at all of the different voices and accents, while laudable, were just off-putting. I do wonder if I'd read the book rather than listened to it whether a lot of the problems I have would have been reduced as I'd be reliant on my own internal monologue and imagination...

I did have the rest of this series on my TBR list, but as they all appear to be standalone novels I'm not going to worry - I've got too many other books that I'm looking forward to to delay reading them for more of the same.