The Nature of Things

I've only read one other book by Philippa Gregory. It was  Wideacre  and it was truly awful, so I approached the reading of this book hesitantly and with trepidation. But people who know my taste kept telling me that it was just my cup of tea so I steeled myself and gave it a try. The verdict? Not bad. The story of the infamous Boleyn family is almost too well-known to require summarizing here. Over the last couple of years, I've read a number of books, both fiction and non-fiction, that were set in the Tudor era - books such as  Wolf Hall  by Hilary Mantel, the Matthew Shardlake series by C.J. Sansom, and  The Lady in the Tower  by Alison Weir - and that included the Boleyns as characters, but this book provides another slant, another viewpoint of the familiar story. The other Boleyn girl is Mary, the younger of the two sisters. Her ambitious family marries her off at twelve to a promising young courtier. She becomes a lady-in-waiting to Queen Katherine an...