Tarnish

Synopsis (book jacket) - Anne Boleyn is the odd girl out. Newly arrived to the court of King Henry VIII, everything about her seems wrong, from her clothes to her manners to her witty but sharp tongue. So when the dashing poet Thomas Wyatt offers to coach her on how to shine at court—and to convince the whole court they’re lovers—she accepts. Before long, Anne’s popularity has soared, and even the charismatic and irresistible king takes notice. More than popularity, Anne wants a voice—but she also wants love. What began as a game becomes high stakes as Anne finds herself forced to make an impossible choice between her heart's desire and the chance to make history.
First line- "A deep breath is all it takes to enter a show more room."
Reviewer’s Notes --First off I must say to the world, Katherine Longshore writes some of the most emotional historical fiction novels I have ever read. Vivid, heartbreaking, and incredibly human, TARNISH constantly tugged on heart strings. You may think you know Anne Boleyn, but you haven't heard anything yet. I read this book on a day long car trip cover to cover and I can't wait to read it again.

TARNISH may be the story of Anne Boleyn, but this is her story before she became queen. I loved Longshore's spin on Anne's relationship with Thomas Wyatt. In this book, it's not just some fling or rumored affair; it's a story about love and inevitable heartbreak. I anticipate Wyatt's poetry as well as Anne's reactions to not only Wyatt but also to Percy and The King. They're so insanely human that I could feel her tears and emotions just soaring out the book and slamming right into me. To say this novel took me on an emotional journey is an understatement.

Throughout the book Anne believes the only reason people can see her is because of Wyatt's poetry. This is somewhat true but what I found fascinating was how she couldn't see how beautiful she was or why men would literally go to war over her. I always thought of Anne Boleyn as this confident seductress, but now I see her more as an insecure girl stuck between love and duty. Even though I knew the end result, I still hoped that the story would change somehow. I guess it's just the girl in me who still believes in love and good people coming out on top.

Though this book does focus a lot on Anne's secretive affairs (and her not so secretive ones), it also focuses on her family and the relationships she has with her siblings. Anne's relationships with Catherine and Mary were complex (to say the least), but her relationship with her brother George was brilliantly written and just truthful in general. I loved how much he adored her and refused to show it, yet everyone else could see it. Keep in mind his life wasn't easy either. His family relationships were no more stable than Anne's. He's supposed to be there to advise Anne as well as carry the Boleyn name; even if that means marrying someone he doesn't want to love. The one thing that stayed true was his obvious adoration for his sister and her love for him, written in a voice all siblings can relate too. Everyone should have a brother like George or mine.

My only fault with this novel was that I wished it were longer. I wish we could've seen Anne as the queen and everything that unfolded after. With that being said, will there be a sequel? PLEASE?

All in all, I highly recommend TARNISH to all Tudor fans, historical fiction buffs, and anyone else who loves a great story. If you're not a fan of historical fiction, I still recommend checking out TARNISH. It reads like a contemporary novel, and believe me, you don't want to miss out on all the relatable characters that you thought you knew. They will make you soar, right before they break your heart. show less

Anne Boleyn is just a girl. As a lady in waiting to the queen she finds that she is always too smart and always has a comment that probably should have remained in her head. Her popularity swells as Thomas Wyatt helps her figure out how to gain favor and attention from the court and ultimately from the great King Henry VIII himself. She is playing with fire and knows she could be cast aside easily if she is not careful, tarnishing her reputation and all that her family has built.

It is clear from the writing that Katherine Longshore's Anne Boleyn is incredibly intelligent and does not hold back so as to appear less so when she is around men. I love her interpretation of how witty and flirtatious she is while still being entirely in show more control of her own fate. show less

let me start this one out by saying that i love english royal history, or at least am starting to love it. remember richard iii? i blame that, which is the first time english class has ever gotten me into anything. so i took out tarnish because you know, anne boleyn. and i’m not going to say i knew a lot about her before reading, and maybe that affected my experience. i looked her up on wikipedia. and i do think that she’s interesting (and it was her that caused henry i don’t know what the number is to split from the catholic church) and this book did an okay job of making her seem like it.

first of all anne is a very confident and impulsive woman. she was interesting when she spoke, but i feel like her inner voice - her narration show more - was rather dull. i found i had to force my way through the book. and there wasn’t much conflict or tension, either, i felt. the plot needs work. the plot needs a lot of work. perhaps it was because i just came from reading a book with high stakes, and yes, that is more of the type of the book i enjoy, but i didn’t like the plot. once again, we get a bloody love triangle. (okay, so i said, i didn’t like reading cishet romances unless they stood out … but like, i thought this would stand out.) more like a love polygon, because you’ve got the stuff with percy and then you’ve got wyatt and you know that anne ends up with the king at the end. it is a Foregone Conclusion.

maybe it was just that the type of story that longshore chose to write wasn’t my preference. i realize now i would much rather read about anne boleyn’s later life, before she was executed. i see how i would have liked it, and there were some tense parts but not enough. a lot of it was sitting around and talking, or the romance part.

what i did like was the relationship with anne and mary, and anne and jane. those were a lot better than how the romance with wyatt was portrayed. and i know that anne did get together with king henry but here, it seemed very quickly brought on and it didn’t come across as strong as i would have liked.

katherine longshore, though, is great at describing things. i could picture anne’s world, the english royal court, and i could picture the dresses and the people in it and what she was seeing. i don’t think the present tense narration worked out very well in this book, though. it works for some books and it doesn’t work for others and this was one it didn’t work for. i felt disconnected to anne even though a first person perspective, while there are books that i feel fully connected to a character even though it’s third person.

anne was a good character, though. i did like her. i think that she was portrayed as being very confident and sure of herself, and also wanting to have a voice in something. that was another thing i liked. historical queens are great and anne is one of them. she stuck out in a good way and made me like her throughout the book, even if she was a little too dependent on men for my liking. (then again this is the 16th century what am i expecting.)

i give this book a 5/10 and recommend this for anyone who likes the history of the english monarchy, or anyone who likes historical romance show less

I received a copy of this audio for review from Penguin Audio through Audiobook Jukebox

Tarnish by Katherine Longshore was very nicely narrated by Leslie Bellair. Her voice was expressive and well paced although not overly animated allowing the reader to enjoy a very laid back narration of this historical story.

I have read just about every book about Anne Boleyn that I can find, she is such a dynamic historical figure with such a tragic story. Tarnish is unique in that some possibilities were explored that I had never considered or read in any other portrayal of her life. Reading this made me recall Susan Bordo's novel "[b:The Creation of Anne Boleyn: A New Look at England's Most Notorious Queen|15814396|The Creation of Anne Boleyn A show more New Look at England's Most Notorious Queen|Susan Bordo|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348098502s/15814396.jpg|16482706]" where she talks about how each generation interprets Anne in a way that fits with that time period. In this case, Anne is depicted in a manner that will appeal to young adults while still remaining very close to what is established history. Longshore's Anne Boleyn was much softer and more approachable than the haughty queen with the biting wit that she's been painted by many other fictional portrayals.

I enjoyed that Tarnish explored the possible relationship between Anne Boleyn and Thomas Wyatt. This is so well done and entirely historically plausible. Several times throughout the story, I felt a little jolt of sadness at some seemingly offhand comment by Anne or Thomas that sounds so innocuous unless you know how this story plays out.

Tarnish begins shortly after Anne's return from France and ends right as her relationship with the king is beginning. I enjoyed imagining Anne as an insecure girl thrown into a hostile court with dreams of being more than a woman of that time period can usually expect. In Anne's strained relationship with her brother and father, Tarnish puts into perspective the way women were viewed in 1500's England.

Overall, this is a wonderful read that I would highly recommend for fans of historical fiction. This is a great introduction to Anne Boleyn for anyone who only knows her as the tragic queen of Henry VIII. And for those who are very familiar with Anne's story, this is a fascinating fresh perspective. show less

I don't use star ratings, so please read my review!

(Description nicked from B&N.com.)

“Anne Boleyn is the odd girl out. Newly arrived to the court of King Henry VIII, everything about her seems wrong, from her clothes to her manners to her witty but sharp tongue. So when the dashing poet Thomas Wyatt offers to coach her on how to shine at court—and to convince the whole court they’re lovers—she accepts. Before long, Anne’s popularity has soared, and even the charismatic and irresistible king takes notice. More than popularity, Anne wants a voice—but she also wants love. What began as a game becomes high stakes as Anne finds herself forced to make an impossible choice between her heart's desire and the chance to make show more history.”

After reading Longshore’s Gilt, I was fully prepared for a new and fresh young-adult take on Anne Boleyn. I figured that it would be tricky to pull off, given what the historical Anne did and lived through, but the author managed to handle Katherine Howard with a good deal of skill, so I didn’t fear too much for the story of Anne.

However, this novel takes the unusual approach of not focusing on the most active and controversial part of Anne’s life—namely, her relationship with Henry. Instead, this story takes place during the time when Anne was newly come to court and struggling to find her place within it. In comparison with the parts of her life that are more widely known, this time period was fairly uneventful; therefore, the author has to draw on what few events are known and try to make them interesting.

In this, she mostly succeeds, at least as far as concerns a love story. She and Wyatt orbit each other, neither quite able to trust the other, while others vie for Anne’s attention. Anne’s conflict between love and ambition plays out fairly plainly against this backdrop. The ambition appears to take second place, though, and very little of the historical context of this time is presented. This is different from Gilt, which did a much better job at weaving together Katherine’s embellished story with the facts. I have to wonder why you would set a novel in the Tudor era with such a polarizing main character if you weren’t going to use that era to maximum effect.

This is the problem that I had with the book personally: I love Tudor history, and I know a lot about Anne Boleyn. This novel makes her out to be much less confident than she actually was, and much more inclined to allow men to define her fate. Even given that many readers won’t necessarily know much about her, I do wish she had been portrayed as a bit stronger of a personality.

On a technical note, there was some repetition in this book that got a little hard to miss. The word “tarnish” is used several times, and since that’s the title, it stands out. Anne also harps over and over again on the fact that she wants love, that she wants her own voice, and the words that she uses don’t significantly vary from use to use. Bear in mind, I read an advance copy of the book, and this may have been edited differently in the finished product.

This definitely isn’t a bad book by any means; on the contrary, as a teen romance, it will likely appeal to the female young adult crowd. I just had very high expectations of this book after being so impressed by the first one; therefore, as a historical novel, I think it left something to be desired. Tarnish doesn’t quite live up to its potential, but it has some high points that will please many readers.

This review originally appeared on Owlcat Mountain on June 11, 2013. show less

Having been greatly impressed by Longshore’s debut novel, Gilt, I was eager to get my hands on the sequel, and thrilled when my friend April gifted me her ARC. I read it slowly over the course of weeks, snuck it in between my review commitments. While I do think Gilt held more appeal for me due to the less traveled subject matter, Longshore still brings something new to Tudor historical fiction with Tarnish.

Read the A Reader of Fictions.

3.5 Stars