Book Review: Innocent Traitor by Alison Weir

Innocent Traitor by Alison Weir

Link to Alison Weir's web site: Alison Weir

Print Length: 407 pages

ISBN-13: 978-0345495341

Plot Summary: The story of Lady Jane Grey–“the Nine Days’ Queen”–a fifteen-year-old girl who unwittingly finds herself at the center of the religious and civil unrest that nearly toppled the fabled House of Tudor during the sixteenth century.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel – the story is utterly compelling and cannot fail to keep one intrigued. The narrative is told in the first person from a number of different perspectives, and while this is a great way of getting right into the characters minds, I did find it a bit confusing at first. I had to go back to the section headings on a number of occasions to remind myself who was narrating the story at that point in time; maybe putting the characters’ names as a header might have helped. Unfortunately I did not find the scene where Lady Grey accepts the crown very convincing – I can imagine how difficult this will have been to narrate, but as it is a critical part of the story, it weakened the novel somewhat. Having said that Alison Weir has a very captivating style of writing and I would recommend Innocent Traitor to anyone wishing to read about greed, ambition and the disastrous consequences that can result.

What do others think?

Goodreads.com: there were 1498 reviews and 25,375 ratings, with an average of 3.94 stars.

Amazon.co.uk: there were 217 reviews with an average rating of 4.4 stars.

Amazon.com: there were 248 reviews with an average rating of 4.3 stars.

Other books by Alison Weir.