A review by kindledspiritsbooks
Anna of Kleve: The Princess in the Portrait by Alison Weir

4.0

When I find myself in times of trouble, my boyfriend comes to me, speaking words of wisdom: ‘Why don’t you read one of your nice books about the Tudors, that usually makes you feel better?’. He is right, he is always right. Alison Weir is continuing to do a brilliant job with her Six Tudor Queens series, in which one book is dedicated to telling the story of each of the six wives of Henry VIII. This one centred around Anna of Kleve, Henry VIII’s fourth wife who he famously divorced for allegedly being much uglier than her portrait had suggested. I hadn’t read a book that entirely centred on Anna before and I really enjoyed getting to read about her life after Henry divorced her. My only issue was that Weir seems to have taken a number of liberties with the facts and much of the drama in the earlier and latter portions of the book was derived from events that most historians would dispute. However, I appreciate that it’s difficult to write a compelling novel about a woman happily retiring to the countryside to live alone and mind her own business so I won’t judge Weir too harshly.