Drivel

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

The story could have been told in 15 mins....Having read Lady of the rivers and both the white queen and the red queen, this was such a disappointment.

Has The White Princess put you off other books in this genre?

It has put me off further Phillipa Gregory books

Would you be willing to try another one of Sarah Feathers’s performances?

Yes

What character would you cut from The White Princess?

It would have been better had any of the principals had any character!

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24 people found this helpful

Excellent read!

Where does The White Princess rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

I loved this book. It brings history to life. Really well read.

What other book might you compare The White Princess to, and why?

Other Phillippa Gregory books.

Have you listened to any of Sarah Feathers’s other performances? How does this one compare?

Haven't listened to any other of SF's performances. Excellent tho.

If you made a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

Wife of Henry VII

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12 people found this helpful

A Trip back in time

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Hot on the heels of the television production of 'The White Queen', Philippa Gregory's 'The White Princess' is the fifth book in the Cousins' War series and this latest instalment tells the story of Elizabeth of York, the daughter of Elizabeth Woodville, the White Queen, and King Edward IV. Elizabeth, young and beautiful and still in love with Richard III (her uncle and, as claimed in this book, her lover) is forced into marriage with Henry VII, the man responsible for the death of Richard, who has taken his crown and who, in marrying Elizabeth, hopes to reinforce his hold on the throne. Elizabeth, as Henry's wife, now finds herself moving between two of the most ambitious and powerful women of their time: her mother, Elizabeth Woodville, with her uncanny powers, and Lady Margaret Beaufort, the mother of Henry VII. And Elizabeth is not just caught between these two women for, in her story, Philippa Gregory shows Elizabeth as a woman torn between loyalty to her husband and the children she bears him, and the hopes that her two brothers (the Princes in the Tower) might have survived and could return to take Henry's crown. There is a huge amount more covered in this novel (which took me some hours to read on my Kindle) including the arrival of the future King Henry VIII, but I shall leave that for prospective readers to discover.

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10 people found this helpful

Not Historically Accurate at All

Did Philippa Gregory actually research Elizabeth of York as a queen and her marriage to Henry VII or did she stop caring after Henry killed and dethroned Richard III? Seriously. The real Elizabeth and Henry have been stated in multiple accounts to have had a happy marriage and seemed to have truly loved each other. What does Philippa Gregory do? Turns Henry VII into a rapist and domestic abuser to Elizabeth who also apparently never really loved him but instead really loved Richard whom she had an incestuous affair with (no historical evidence at all that this happened or was even rumoured to have happened).

Philippa Gregory seems to hate the Tudor family and is so desperate that she’ll invent absolutely ludicrous justifications for it to then pass off as history to her readers. Thoroughly disappointed and actually annoyed by this book. Do not read it.

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4 people found this helpful

Don't bother!

This is the fifth in The Cousins' War series I have either read or listened to. I have enjoyed the previous four but this has just been terribly boring with constant repetition the whole way through the book!... Could easily have been half the length! .. It has put me off reading the next book - The King's Curse.

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4 people found this helpful

Doesn't ring true as historical fiction.

Would you try another book written by Philippa Gregory or narrated by Sarah Feathers?

I'm a huge fan of Tudor history, but I could not get into this at all. From the opening chapter I was put off the leading character by her constant lamenting over the loss of her incestuous and adulterous affair with her Uncle, Richard III, and when very early on in the book I was presented with a rape scene of her by Henry Tudor, I turned my iPod off in disgust. I will stick with Alison Weir's fiction, it is both more historically convincing and more sensitively written.

Would you ever listen to anything by Philippa Gregory again?

Definitely not.

Which scene did you most enjoy?

None.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from The White Princess?

All scenes casting women as either witches, religious maniacs or precocious teenagers. There must have been more to these historical women than the above stereotypes.

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4 people found this helpful

An interesting interpretation

An interesting interpretation of the history to make a good story - so much better than the TV serial of the same book, which is frankly utter rubbish. However, it was quite repetitive, facts being repeated over and over, which became tedious but not enough to ruin the enjoyment of it.

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3 people found this helpful

as always a great and informative ljsten

I have listened to a number of Phillipa Gregory's books and slowly but surely my knowledge of our monarchy grows. charActers are appearing across the stories and the links are made . a greY story as always ...well narrated - looking forward to another!

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2 people found this helpful

Conflicting, and repetitive.

I actually quite enjoyed this book overall, however there were some discrepancies. Henry VII and Elizabeth of York famously had quite a loving marriage despite the circumstances in which it began, though I didn't get that impression at all through the book. It seemed that as soon as they found a connection/love, they had an argument and it was ruined for months, only for this pattern to be repeated constantly throughout. However, I did think Gregory's portrayal of Henry VII as extremely paranoid about the stability of his reign and the loyalty of those who surrounded him very realistic. I can't imagine he wouldn't have had these constant ups and downs considering the manner in which he came to the throne, and found this to be a fresh perspective. Overall, a good book by Gregory, though in terms of character relationships I have to say this is one of the rare instances where I preferred the TV adaptation.

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1 person found this helpful

Loved it

I have read the book before but I did like the audio version the lady did well loved it

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