I thought the idea of this book was so great and I was so thrilled to read it; however, it did fall a bit short for me. I tried my best to get into it, but struggled and DNF’ed it. That isn’t to say that this title isn’t worth a read, it just wasn’t the right fit for me!

I will not be giving feedback on this book as I couldn’t really get into it but I think others may enjoy it.

“The Dead Queens Club” had an intriguing premise, and while I definitely enjoyed it, it started slow and jumped around a lot and made it a bit hard to follow. By the second half, however, the story picked up and I couldn’t put it down. Overall, it was a unique, fun retelling. Definitely give it a shot!

The Dead Queens Club by Hannah Capin is a modern day telling of the story of King Henry the 8th and his six wives The story revolves around Henry and his various ex-girlfriends, from the perspective of "Cleves," the only ex to remain friends after dating him. Cleves is a journalist for the school paper and is investigating a situation from the previous year's prom where one of Henry's girlfriends died. Things get more intense when his current girlfriend dies. Cleves just can't seem to believe that Henry would hurt anyone. There is a lot of blaming and misdirecting as she searches for the truth. I thought this was a cute read and the author did an interesting job of bringing history alive in the present..

A retelling of the wives of Henry VIII is a super fun concept, especially when it takes place in modern day. Overall, I just wanted more from this - I wanted it to give even more of a voice to the wives who, unlike Anne Boleyn, are often forgotten in name and are only known by a verb in a rhyme.

Where do I begin with my love for this book? Everything about it speaks to my heart, Cleves is probably one of my favorite characters of all time, smart, hilarious, sarcastic with flaws and vulnerabilities that make her so incredibly relatable. The queens absolutely draw from their historical counterparts and they all gave me a new appreciation for their lives and an extreme amount of anger for the way history has condemned them in ways they never deserved. These girls are amazing. I want to be friends with every single one of them. And Henry was so well-written, very much how I’d imagine a modern teenage version of who’d he’d actually be. I won’t spoil anything, but wow, did I loved the ending - it felt so perfect. Hilarious and feminist and everything I love about girls getting stuff done, this is one story that’s going to stick with me for years.

Good, possibly great retelling, not of fiction, but of actual history. My favorite part of history, in fact, so I truly appreciated all the easter eggs and references to the Tudors. I HIGHLY doubt the intended teen audience will get even half the stuff that's been crammed here but it's lovely.

The Dead Queens Club by Hannah Capin had such a promising premise, but just did not follow through in the execution. It was just way too long, the ending just completely lost me, and there were just way too many plot holes. I think that this could have been great, but it just missed the mark entirely.

The Dead Queens Club by Hannah Capin had an interesting premise that had me super excited! I love the Tudors and a modern retelling sounded like so much fun! This story had a lot of promise, but it didn't quite hit the execution. I will definitely check out more by this author in the future.

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The Dead Queens Club
by Hannah Capin (Goodreads Author)
3.57 · Rating details · 1,496 ratings · 461 reviews
Mean Girls meets The Tudors in Hannah Capin’s The Dead Queens Club, a clever contemporary YA retelling of Henry VIII and his wives (or, in this case, his high school girlfriends). Told from the perspective of Annie Marck (“Cleves”), a 17-year-old aspiring journalist from Cleveland who meets Henry at summer camp, The Dead Queens Club is a fun, snarky read that provides grea ...more
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Hardcover, 464 pages
Published January 29th 2019 by Inkyard Press
ISBN133554223X (ISBN13: 9781335542236)
Edition LanguageEnglishSettingIndiana (United States)

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January 27, 2019 – Finished Reading4 Show more
Review This review was first published on my blog: Natflix&Books

The Dead Queens Club was easily one of my most anticipated books of the year. A modern, YA take on King Henry VIII and ALL of his wives (not just Anne Boleyn)?! So sold! I was thrilled when I got an early copy and started it pretty early. Read the first few pages and set it aside. This isn’t unusual. Books rarely grab me right away, and I tend to feel a bit guilty about starting books super early. At the end of December, I decided to give it another try…and it has taken me the last three/four weeks to get through it.

The Dead Queens Club starts with Henry dating his fifth of the six girlfriends (wives), “Katie Howard” friendly cheerleader extraordinaire. The novel is narrated by the fourth girlfriend, “Cleves” (Anna of Cleves–nicknamed because she is from Cleveland). Their relationship didn’t word out, but Cleves and Henry are still best friends. His first girlfriend has left town for college, Anne has died in a tragic firework accident, and Jane…is also at college (I can’t remember and it really doesn’t matter).

I don’t usually do reviews this way, but I’m so on the fence about this one…

What I liked:

Cleves — I really enjoyed Cleves as a narrator. Her sense of humor is close to my own. I felt bad for her as she obviously isn’t completely over the blink and it was over relationship between herself and Henry. I liked that she loved Katie even though she started dating Henry almost immediately after the break-up instead of hating the “other” girl.

The chapter headings — are hilarious.

The premise — is awesome (even if it doesn’t necessarily work as well as I wanted it to).

What I didn’t:

This book is soooooo long. As much as I was enjoying the writing style, the book started to wear on me after awhile simply because it wouldn’t just end.

The ending just goes completely off the rails and doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. I put this book aside for a week to read something else when I only had about 50 pages left because I was so over it. I finished this last night so I could get out a review on time for once in my life and I could barely even read the last page. The timeline. The book skips around from the summer camp where Cleves and Henry met, to Anna being alive, to after Cleves’ and Henry’s relationship. I personally enjoy stories that jump around a bit, but this one was a bit of a mess (which might be cleaned up a bit in the finished copies).

What didn’t bother me but could have worked better:

The timeline. The book skips around from the summer camp where Cleves and Henry met, to Anna being alive, to after Cleves’ and Henry’s relationship. I personally enjoy stories that jump around a bit, but this one was a bit of a mess (which might be cleaned up a bit in the finished copies).

So would I recommend?

Ehh…If you like history and YA retellings and don’t have the attention span of a gnat, yeah. Again, the humor was my kind and the premise and writing style were fun.

From the plot of this book, it had everything I would want from a contemporary retelling of Henry VIII and his six wives. I thought it would be a lot more fantastical than the execution. The plot of this book took a little too long to get started which I wasn't expecting given the basic plots of this book are written in history books. Once the plot gets going everything seems to happen all at once with no break.

I truly loved that the narrator of this book isn't the regular choice of Anne Boleyn or Catherine of Aragorn, and I enjoyed getting a new perspective of Henry's girlfriends. There were a few parts of the book that felt a little too cavalier in the deaths of young girls.

This was a fun and intense read. My main issue was that after a certain point, the truth behind the prom incident was so obvious that it became pretty frustrating that Cleves took so long to come around to it. Despite that, though, I really enjoyed Cleves as a narrator for the most part. She has such a unique voice, and her very particular sense of humor shines through the whole book.

I did get the riff in this one, which plays with the Henry VIII story, but you’d have to have completely skipped British history not to get it. In this take, Henry is a small-town football hero with a chip on his shoulder, who dates his way through a succession of girls who echo the Tudor queens, some of whom end up suspiciously dead. The story is narrated by Cleves (so-nicknamed because she hails from Cleveland), Henry’s BFF and — for 15 days — his fourth girlfriend. Gradually, Cleves starts to suspect that Henry’s bad luck with the ladies may be his own fault, and she teams up with his other surviving girlfriends to discover the truth about what really happened to Anne and Katie. It’s a fun idea, though it lags a bit in the telling and it has plenty of plot holes.

SASS. RETELLING. HOTNESS. I Loved this almost as much as I love love love the Author on Twitter :) can’t wait to hand sell!

I went into this with high expectations and was let down. I had a really had a hard time rating this because I wasn't a fan of the writing or the main character but I loved the story. I had considered giving up on this multiple times but decided to push through and I'm glad that I did. Cleves was so annoying and I wish we had a perspective other than hers to read from.

As a massive Tudor fan., I really wanted to love this, but the voice turned me off almost immediately. I tried the audiobook as well., but just couldn't continue. It's a DNF for me, but I'm sure others will feel differently.

A cute retelling of the life of Henry VIII with very little accuracy to the real life person but enough that it was recognizable. Cleaves is one of the many ex girlfriends of Henry the "King" of the school. When he finds himself questioning his loyalty to his current girlfriend he spirals into pranks and jealousy dragging Cleaves along for the ride. Information comes to light that makes Cleave's friend Parker think that the doom of Henry's girlfriends might not be so coincidental.

The story lost me a bit because it had random time jumps that were unexpected and confused me as a reader. It was written well but it was slow at first. When the action did start to happen it happened all at once and then slowed down again. The ending especially was so much action crammed in to the end that I had a hard time following it. Overall a cute story I would recommend to teens who like historical fiction but want something a little different.

This sounded really fun, and I was really looking forward to it. It sonded like it had potential, and I really liked the cover.

I know most of the plot was supposed to read as funny and meaningful, but it really was all over the place. The plot was very confusing, and keeping up with Cleves' inner monologue was tough.

But I can admit that I probably wasn't the intended audience for this because the humor just wasn't my style. Overall, this book was just so odd.

I received a copy of this book for a fair and honest review. This was a crazy and over the top YA retelling of Henry VIII. The story is told from Cleveland's point of view and sometimes she could be a bit much too handle. There were times the story was just funny and other times when it got a little dark and strange. There were a few times that I kept wondering what was going to happen and who was behind all of this. The little bit of mystery added to the dynamic of the whole tale. I would considering reading more by this author.

This book. THIS BOOK. It was so good! It was twisty and turnsy and it kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time. I ADORED our narrator Cleves, I even adored Henry (even knowing I shouldn't! That it wouldn't turn out well!)

The way Hannah Capin spun the story had me rooting against the other girls until suddenly, suddenly — they were, quite obviously, the queens.

Masterfully done and I cannot wait to read all the rest of her books.