I can honestly say I don't know much about the history of Scotland, so it was fun to read about what was happening there while Henry VIII was on the throne in England. I enjoyed the history and learning about the culture, and I think this story had a great deal of turmoil that kept the story going.

The one issue I had with this book, and it's no fault of the author (per se), was the arrogance of Queen Margaret. She was envious of her sister Mary and sister-in-law Katherine, always wanting to be better than them and wanting to see them fall. She wanted their pity when things were going bad for her, but didn't offer any to them when roles were reversed. How much of this was based on what historians know of Queen Margaret and how much was Gregory's own creative liberty I don't know, but it doesn't seem far-fetched to think of a Tudor princess with this mentality. Unfortunately, it did make the first half or so of the book fairly frustrating at times, as I simply wanted to slap Margaret and tell her to get over herself. However, she does get better as the book progresses. She does still focus on herself and how she is doing compared to her sisters, but her problems eventually become big enough that how she compares just doesn't seem quite as important as it used to.

The plot of the novel was great, taking Margaret from Princess of England to Queen of Scotland to Dowager Queen and even lower. She fights for her rights and the rights of her son, the true heir to the throne of Scotland. The battles even become personal when a man she should have been able to trust becomes one of her worst enemies. The ups and downs of this story kept me wanting to find out more, and I very much enjoyed it.

This is one that I really thought I would enjoy because so many people seem to love it, but I ended up having a lot of mixed feelings about it.

The beginning was very slow and hard to get into. I wasn't overly interested in her time at Lowood School, and the chapters before that were interesting but not written in a way that moved the story forward at a good pace for me.

Once she became Adele's governess, the story picked up, especially once Mr. Rochester returned home. Once the story took a huge turn, my interest came in spurts for the rest of the story. Throughout the book, Jane never really had close relationships with anyone who treated her really well. Some people treated her better than others, and she did have one or two moments where things were going really well for her, but most of the book was a downer for her.

Overall, there were a few characters, including Jane, that I really liked but quite a few that I didn't; and the pacing was too back and forth between fast/interesting and slow/boring for me to really enjoy it as much as I had hoped to.