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The National BestsellerIn the autumn of 1558, church bells across England ring out the joyous news that Elizabeth I is the new queen. One woman hears the tidings with utter dread. She is Amy Dudley, wife of Sir Robert, and she knows that Elizabeth's ambitious leap to the throne will draw her husband back to the center of the glamorous Tudor court, where he was born to be. Elizabeth's excited triumph is short-lived. She has inherited a bankrupt country where treason is rampant and foreign war a certainty. Her faithful advisor William Cecil warns her that she will survive only if she marries a strong prince to govern the rebellious country, but the one man Elizabeth desires is her childhood friend, the ambitious Robert Dudley. As the young couple falls in love, a question hangs in the air: can he really set aside his wife and marry the queen? When Amy is found dead, Elizabeth and Dudley are suddenly plunged into a struggle for survival. Philippa Gregory's The Virgin's Lover answers the question about an unsolved crime that has fascinated detectives and historians for centuries. Intelligent, romantic, and compelling, The Virgin's Lover presents a young woman on the brink of greatness, a young man whose ambition exceeds his means, and the wife who cannot forgive them.
Customer Reviews: Rating: 
Date: 2008-07-04
Excellent Purchase!
Excellent purchase. Book arrived in excellent condition and promptly. Pleasure doing business with seller! Thank you! Rating: 
Date: 2008-07-04
Abomination
I finally reviewed my favorite book on Elizabeth, "Legacy" by Susan Kay, so I needed to sit down and review my most reviled book on her. That is "The Virgin's Lover".
This book just horrified me. Not merely because I KNOW Ms. Gregory is a better writer than this. Don't get me wrong, I disagree strongly with her portrayal of Anne Boleyn as the embodiment of all that's evil in the world, but I still respected her work. This novel was simply hideous. The weakest, most simpering, spineless portrayal of Elizabeth I think I've ever read.
She doesn't know her way around court? Come on! CECIL doesn't know his way around court? They both have to be helped by the grand Robert Dudley?
I suspected when I read this that Ms. Gregory's lost without a spineless, bland, innocent-to-the-point-of-stupidity character to tell her story for her. However, Wideacre (told from the POV of a clear sociopath) was a good book.
I can only second those who have suggested someone is ghostwriting books in her name now. There is no excuse for "The Virgin's Lover." Rating:
Date: 2008-07-01
I really hate to do this, but...
I had to force myself to finish this book, basically because I spent 16 bucks on it. Had I borrowed it from the library, I'd never have finished it. And Gregory is my favorite "guilty pleasure" author. This thing has taken me weeks to finish. A book this size I usually finish in 2 days or so. The plot is loose and boring. It just goes on and on and on, and you wait for something to happen. Dudley is a jerk, again and again. Elizabeth has no idea what she's doing. Amy just stares blankly into the distance or prays. The characters are SO shallow and I just really don't care about them. She'd have done better making the novel from Cecils point of view. At least he seemed to have an opinion. It's like reading the diaries of three very stupid, conceited (except Amy), boring people who are unaware of how badly they are being used. If you've never read Gregory's books before, do NOT start with this one! A great book of hers, is "The Queen's Fool" and if you want a good (if a little slow in parts) book about Elizabeth, try "I, Elizabeth" by Rosalind Miles. Rating: 
Date: 2008-06-29
Good but not as good as her others
I would give it 3.5 stars if I could. I'm a big fan of Ms. Gregory. This read a bit like a Harlequin Romance Novel after reading Allison Weir's "Innocent Traitor." It still held my interest (which is hard when there are so many great books out there deserving of one's time). I did not love it as much as The Other Boleyn Girl or the Boleyn Inheritance but it was nonetheless a a good read. Rating:
Date: 2008-06-29
Not the worst, but not the best
I don't know if the writing was just really good, or if I just felt sorry for Amy Dudely, but I can honestly say that by the end of the book, I thoroughly hated Robert Dudely. Queen Elizabeth is written to be a weak lovesick woman, which I'm not sure if I agree with, and the book takes about 100 pages or so to get interesting. There's a brief cameo of Hannah Verde (Green) from the preceding book "The Queen's Fool" and Catherine Knolly (Mary Boleyn's Daughter) also has a cameo in this book. Overall, I give the book 3 stars, not my favorite by Gregory, but not the worst either. |
