4.5 stars.

This series continues to engage. It is a good merging of nonfiction and fiction with some great elements of history beyond England. The series has been different from most of her books as it has focused on a more commonplace family, but this installment does veer a bit more toward the typical plot lines of her novels as it does bring in more of the English royal history while merging some very interesting pieces.

Though the plot can move a bit slowly in some places, there is still the charm of a typical Philippa Gregory novel. Her character work is fantastic and the emotions evoked by her writing run the gamut. The family saga continues to be interesting and she has added additional characters so that the story now includes four generations. Gregory also manages to create quite the villainous character in Livia. She may be one of the best characters in the book and I loved to hate her. Gregory has slowly been building her awfulness and it reaches peak meddler in this novel.

The ending takes place in a way that leaves things potentially open for further novels in this series and I would be very interested to see where the story can go. I feel like there is quite a lot of potential remaining and a lot of character arcs that I need to see furthered. This was possibly my favorite in the series so far, so I am now hungering for more.