FIRST REVIEW:
I finally finished reading the book today. It's only 180 pages and they don't even remotely take up the entire page, but I got about halfway through and then needed to put it down for awhile. Matilda is Katherine Howard's cousin. So you know this thing ain't gonna end well. I was thinking this was going to be some country girl in Court with the cousin she's just getting to know, who just happens to be on the track to becoming the next queen. Katherine shows her the ropes and such. Well, it starts out that way, but Matilda's entire purpose at Court is to get Katherine to be queen. Yep, we're putting all that on a 13-year-old. She does well at learning how to be a court mastermind and she pulls off some believable tricks, because it's clear that she is an intelligent girl, but it also feels like all the burden is on her. And she doesn't even try to stop Katherine from seeing Culpepper! You'd think she would have known to nip that sucker in the bud. She frets about it plenty, but she could try harder to make Katherine see the eventual outcome. Although Katherine's dumb as rocks, which she pretty much was, so that's accurate. And Katherine's story is quite a sexual one, which you can't exactly tell in a kids' book, so a lot of her true story was lost because of that.
Anyway, the book is just not that good. It's very shallow and you don't really get to know Matilda very well. It's all about her reactions, not herself. You see very little of her true self. It's got some nice bits about court life in there, but I'd say read the Royal Diaries instead. I was excited to have a book involving Katherine Howard, but this one just did not do the job, and it turned Matilda into a rather unlikeable character, because she's a pawn in such an unbelievable way and it overtakes any tiny bits of her personality that are shown. They shouldn't have made her related to Katherine and tied up in this big plot. She would have fared better as a casual observer.
I'm hoping the next book, Amelia's Inheritance, is better. The premise of the entire line is that this is one long line of female descendants, so things of Matilda's (I believe a trunk and brooch given to Katherine by Culpepper) are passed down. Amelia's Victorian, which isn't a time period that really interests me, but her story seems intriguing.
SECOND REVIEW:
Sadly, my thoughts are still the same. I just can't stand this book. Matilda is one of my favorite dolls, but she's a paper doll of a character. She's got hardly any personality and it changes quickly. She has promise, because she's interested in medicines and would love to become a female doctor, but she's way too easily caught up in court life and clothes and dancing. She loses the parts of her that make medicines and like to read, despite there being another character who also reads and can help her get books. She does this eventually, but by that time, she's also deeply immersed in the plot to make Katherine queen. She's completely taken over by what's going on around her and it makes her a very undeveloped character. We're told more about what she does than about who she is and what she's thinking. And this is written like a DIARY. We should know exactly how she feels IN DEPTH. But so many things aren't explored nearly as much as they should be.
I guess this is what happens when a screenwriter tries to write a novel for a small company. Big ideas with no solid development. I don't even know if there's an editor for these books, but if there is, it's another shoddy person.
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