Tannat

Read by Rachael Beresford

Series: Plantagenet Embers #1 (not really a series but anyway)

Basically this is a fictionalized biography of Elizabeth of York. I hadn’t realized there were so few historical fiction books centering on Elizabeth of York because I had actually read another book about her a few years ago (The Tudor Rose by Margaret Campbell Barnes). Despite having a rough idea of the historical events surrounding that time period, it was still an entertaining read because although I generally knew what would happen, I didn’t always remember how it happened or when, exactly.

I rather liked Elizabeth’s mother, Elizabeth Woodville, with all her scheming. Naturally I liked her more as a character than as a person. You really don’t need to make up much when it comes to this era in history (other than to fill in the blanks).  Whatever actually happened is on par with your typical soap opera plot. Ok, maybe not quite that bad, but hopefully you know what I mean, with all the overthrowing of kings and close friends and family members being branded as traitors.

It did start to feel like I was skipping over to different scenes in Elizabeth’s life after a while rather than following a story, but that’s probably partially due to my habit of listening in 15-minute segments a lot of the time and generally being a poor listener rather than any fault of the author’s. This is why I usually stick to rereads for audiobooks. I can only take so much rewinding and it can be hard to keep track of all the different characters without being able to glance back a few pages.

I liked the narrator, although I’m now not sure if I’d vote for her to do the next book, Faithful Traitor. It might be interesting to hear a different woman’s story in a different voice.

I’d like to note that I won an audiobook copy of this book when Samantha Wilcoxson was giving out some copies when it came out. Thanks, Samantha!

Since the audiobook was published in July 2016, I’m counting this as my “Published June, July or August 2016” square. Yay, blackout! (Or blue-out, in my case, because of the ducks).