To Hold the Crown (Tudor Saga #1) in Pick-a-Shelf

Jun 15, 2010 Lyn (Readinghearts) rated it liked it

Shelves: historical-fiction, tudor, 2010-read, royals, books-i-own, romance

I finally finished To Hold the Crown: The Story of King Henry VII and Elizabeth of York by Jean Plaidy. The month of July has been so busy for me, I have been having a hard time getting time to read.

If you follow my reviews, you know I usually start with a story. Well the story about this book is that it was picked as a group read for the Tudor History Lovers group here on Goodreads. In this group we pick a Tudor figure every two months to read a book about. For June and July that person was El I finally finished To Hold the Crown: The Story of King Henry VII and Elizabeth of York by Jean Plaidy. The month of July has been so busy for me, I have been having a hard time getting time to read.

If you follow my reviews, you know I usually start with a story. Well the story about this book is that it was picked as a group read for the Tudor History Lovers group here on Goodreads. In this group we pick a Tudor figure every two months to read a book about. For June and July that person was Elizabeth of York. Since this book was billed as the love story between King Henry VII and his wife Elizabeth of York, it won the members poll for the group read. In fact, Elizabeth of York was a very minor character in the book and the love story was hardly in the book at all.

Although that was a disappointment, the book itself was a pretty good rendition of the reign of King Henry VII chronicling Henry's obsession with keeping the crown for the Tudor's and the factors in play that fueled that obsession. Additionally, there was a lot of time spent on the character of Henry VIII as a small child and youth, and Katharine of Aragon, as first Arthur's wife and then Henry VIII's betrothed. As such, the author did a good job telling the story of the beginning of the Tudor dynasty.

One comment I would like to make, though, with regards to this book is the poor editing that was done. There were a lot of mistakes, and while I usually ignore them in favor of the story, many of the group members felt that they detracted from the book quite a bit. As it turns out, those group members who had original copies from the UK, or early (circa 1984) US editions did not have the errors, but those of us who had the newer editions did. There were many misspelled words and misplaced punctuation marks that did not seem to be in the original editions. Obviously, since these errors were not in the original editions, one cannot blame the author, but must look to the editors of the newer editions. In my opinion, this is a huge disservice to the author as it can turn off many potential readers.

All in all, I am giving the book 3 stars. It was a good, but not great book. I did not want to sit up all night reading it to see what was happening. However, it is the first book in Plaidy's Tudor Series, and I do plan to read the others. ...more

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