I have loved everything I've read by Alison Weir in the past -- fiction and nonfiction -- and her latest novel does not disappoint.

This is the fictionalized telling of the life of Anna of Kleves, Henry VIII's fourth wife, one of only two who outlived him, from when she was 14 in Kleves until her death in her forties.

While this is obviously a fictionalized account -- for example, there is no actual written history of Anna having any illegitimate children -- Weir does an excellent job of seamlessly blending fact and fiction in this novel.

I highly recommend this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC of this book. It has not influenced my review.

I love Alison Weir. Her story of Anne of Cleves (Anna of Kleve, when properly written) is beautiful and really gets the reader engrossed in the tale.

Following Anna from her brief first love, to her secret, to marrying Henry the Eighth, to the annulment that history has written about since, the story is beautiful insight into what Anna must have felt when she feared for her life and how she was the only one of Henry's queens to remain on his good side for their entire time together.

RIch with both history and fiction, I'd recommend this book to anyone who loves Tudor history. It was a wonderful escape on a long plane ride!

As an avid reader of the Tudors, I am almost embarrassed to admit I never paid a lot of attention to Anne of Cleves (or Anna of Kleve, as the author reminds us). I always thought that after her lucky divorce from Henry VIII, she lived the rest of her life a jolly, well-established, happy-go-lucky spinster. Well, not necessarily so! I was surprised, reading this novel, that she was never able to completely relax and bask in her relative anonymity. Alison Weir has given us a very likeable, intelligent, obedient daughter of Kleve who was clever enough to stay on Henry’s good side, while finding herself unable to overcome his repugnance. From the first she knew something was wrong between them, and at the same time she was determined not to make the same mistakes his previous wives did. Anna liked being queen. When divorce was foisted on her, she also learned to like her independent status. But this was only part of the story. Poor Anna discovered that her freedom as the king’s “sister” was not a freedom at all.

Because the crown was paying her annuity and granting her estates, she was always at the mercy of the king’s—and the council’s—moods, needs, and priorities. If she displeased, she could lose everything. If someone spread rumors about her, she could be in danger. If the crown needed money, they could take one of her estates away. Behind the scenes, a love interest with her cousin provided both her happiest moments and her worst nightmares—all of it before and after her marriage to Henry. She didn't dare expose her love affair for fear of being cut off financially. And once Henry was dead, she was at the mercy of his children who didn’t have as much reason to favor her. Anna’s life was certainly a mixed bag. There were many tense scenes along the way to keep my interest, and I found her story quite fascinating.

Alison Weir is in my top 10 historical fiction authors of all time. Any book that has her name on it, you can bet that I will be reading it. I have really enjoyed the wives of Henry VIII series of books that this one is a part of. I have read several different novels by many different authors about every one of his wives, but I never get bored, and I am always ready to read a new one. Anna of Kleve's is, in my opinion, the least exciting of his wives, but that doesn't make her story any less interesting. The only reason that it is not quite as exciting, is because she didn't get her head chopped off or die while married to him! Ms. Weir does not disappoint, and this novel is just as good as the other novels in the series. I was so excited when I saw that she was doing a series on the six wives, so I have been on netgalley to request a copy or on amazon buying a copy. This author is another one on my list of favorites whose novels are so good that I am sure to buy or request a copy as soon as they come out. You definitely won't be disappointed with this novel, and you can read it as a stand alone if you like, but I have enjoyed reading them in the order that they were published.

I'm a big fan of Allison Weir, so I was thrilled to be approved to receive this title. Her research is thorough, and her writing style brings history to life. I did not want the book to end. It's not because Anna is a gripping historical figure, either. It's because Weir captured her struggle so perfectly. Anna was a pawn, an object, with little to no say in her own life. I felt her fear when she lost favor, and I celebrated with her when she was "freed."

I enjoyed learning about Anna from her perspective, not Henry's. She's different from what I had thought before starting the novel

I did run into a few abrupt narrative switches, but I did read an early copy, and they certainly didn't affect my enjoyment.

Anna of Kleve was one of the lucky ones. She survived marriage, however short, to King Henry VIII. As Anna leaves her home to begin a new life in England, she wonders what she is getting into, and what her life will hold.
As she begins her reign as the queen, she knows that there is no love between her and Henry. He made a few attempts to consummate their marriage, but then stopped. While they are polite, she knows that unless she can produce an heir, she is in a precarious position.

As Henry moves to have the marriage annulled, using her precontract as a means, she does not want to return home. Preferring to stay in England, and bowing to the Kings demands, she manages to secure a very decent position for herself as the "King's beloved sister." While no longer the queen of England, she has her own estates and a fairly healthy income. Now that they are not married, the relationship between Henry and Anna has improved, and they are learning to enjoy spending time with each other.

My thoughts:
I have held off writing this review for a while, trying to wrap my head around what to say. While this book had some very interesting points, I felt that even though labeled historical fiction, it took to many liberties with the Lady Anna. Through the book, Anna has a love interest in her cousin, and through this, she gives birth to an illegtimate child. This is hushed up, the child given away, and she moves on to her life as the queen of England. But after the marriage with the king falls apart, she once again welcomes her cousin into her bed.
While reading through this, I kept thinking "this is not how a woman of this time would have behaved, especially one who was dependant upon the good graces of the king." While she may have been human and longed for some sort of relationship through her life, the position that she was in, would have made this unthinkable. Through her actions and what we know about her through writings, the mere thought of this can be brushed away as fanatical. There was just to much for her to lose, both in England and her home country, if anything like this had really ever taken place.
While historical fiction is meant to entertain with some loose hold to history, there are times when it goes to far, and enters the realm of fantasy.

I read a free NetGalley preview copy of this novel. I have said before on my blog that I love, love, love anything about British royals, and I have read the first novel in Alison Weir’s Six Tudor Queens series, the one on Katherine of Aragon. The second and third are in my Kindle library, waiting only because historical fiction novels take me a while to read. I have to do lots of informal research while I’m reading to see how much is the historical foundation and how much is the author’s creative gap-fillings. When I saw this book show up, I had to go ahead and request it because Anna of Kleve (or Anne of Cleves, as we’ve more commonly heard) is the only one of the six wives that I haven’t read much about, and I was not disappointed!

What I liked:
Weir goes beyond just fleshing out the narrative we’re all familiar with — Henry liked the portrait of her painted by Holbein, hated her appearance in real life, didn’t consummate his marriage with her, and allowed to remain in English as his “sister” after having their marriage annulled. She creates a character who has a past before she comes to England, and Anna’s struggles with learning a new language and culture make the reader sympathize with the poor queen.
About that past she had…Weir explains her choice for this story element in her author’s note and the historical foundation for it based on additional comments made by Henry in his reasons for divorcing Anna of Kleve. It’s an intriguing possibility. I knew about Henry’s post-wedding night complaints of her looks and smells, but I didn’t know before that he had told Cromwell that he “took her to be no maid.”

What I didn’t love:
It’s long, but my view on this is probably skewed by the fact that I view most of what I read through the lens of “Will my students actually want to read this?” I’m also a slow reader.
The plot does sometimes seem to go in circles and get a little repetitive. I know the point is to portray history in a fictional narrative rather than a dry nonfiction textbook, and one would want to stick to history in a book like this, but there are some places the plot could be tightened up a little bit since other liberties are already happening anyway. Does that make any sense outside of my head?
Verdict: Excellent historical fiction, just as we can expect from Alison Weir, but definitely more appealing to adults than to teenagers. I probably won’t buy it for the school library because the length and subject matter are going to cause it to passed over on the shelf (and I just want to tell them they’re crazy for skipping over it!!!!), but I will certainly continue to read this series and purchase the rest of them.

Alison Weir is not a new author for me and I went into this knowing I would get an enjoyable read. If you know anything about Henry VIII then you know of Anne of Cleves. But I found that I didn't really know her story. Alison Weir does a wonderful job of fleshing out the strong woman that survived being a wife of King Henry.

Thank you to NetGalley, Random House/Ballantine Publishing, and Alison Weir for the electronic ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This is the fourth installment of Weir's Six Tudor Queens series. I have been a fan of Weir's non-fiction work for over a decade and equally love her fiction work. Her non-fiction has become like gospel to many of her readers, myself included, which does factor into my review of this book as I don't feel like this is her best work. I give it 3.5 stars rounded up to 4. Anna is Henry VIII's wife I know the least about & was excited to learn more, even in the fiction format. As in Weir's previous fiction work, she includes a lot of relevant insight of the daily life of the time such as the dress and food of the period. This only enhances the atmosphere of the book in my opinion.

The book follows Anna through her strict and sheltered upbringing in her small German duchy to her eventual marriage to Henry VIII and move to England. I like Weir's style of telling the story in the first person and showing how Anna likely felt. She uses as much historical fact as is known and, as with all historical fiction, supplements the rest. This is the aspect I had the most trouble with. Although the author's reasoning in her end note explanation makes sense, I struggle to believe the story line of Anna coming to her marriage not a virgin. I just find it hard to come to terms with Anna really being "compromised" when she came to Henry VIII and that it wasn't just another rumor he started to fit his version of reality and to save face in light of his impotence. That is the biggest problem I had with the book. The story line made for an excellent work of complete fiction, which I am well aware this is. I just had higher hopes for Alison Weir who is known for fact emphasized fiction. However, because I know so much about this era, largely from the author's own non-fiction work, it was almost too much for me to overcome. I felt myself disassociating the real historical person from the character in the book. Had I read this book with little knowledge of Tudor history, I probably would've given it 4.5 out of 5 stars because Weir did weave an excellent love story for a woman that history tells us had love very much lacking from her life!

Overall, Anna does come to life and I learned a lot about the struggles she faced after she became the king's "beloved sister" and Henry VIII's death. Anna's life after the divorce is far from glossed over in the novel. Weir shows that although Henry took care of her financially for the most part, there were real struggles both political and financial Anna went through. I'm glad to have read the parts of her story that were based on actual fact, no just conjecture. The writing was excellent, even when I felt the story was lacking. I look forward to the Katherine Howard installment of the series!

Alison Weir is one of my favorite authors. I appreciate how much historical research she has done prior to writing her novels. Anna of Kleve, the fourth wife of Henry VIII, is not as well known as some of his other wives. I appreciated this glimpse into Anna's life. The book begins when Anna is a teenager and covers the remainder of her life. This means that only a small portion takes place during her marriage. Since this series has one book for each of Henry's wives, the reader gets a glimpse into how he has changed over the years. This is an older, more pessimistic and hurt Henry than the one we saw in the previous book about Jane Seymour. My only complaint is that a major part of the storyline in this novel is completely fictional. It felt as if the author was grasping at straws in order to add some additional drama for her readers while still finding a very loose, very debatable way to "justify" having gone this direction. I felt that this was unnecessary, especially since one of the things I've always appreciated most about Weir is that she typically doesn't take such great liberties with historical figures. That said, I enjoyed reading the novel and look forward to book five.

While I have read some of Alison Weir’s non-fiction, history, in the past, Anna of Kleve is my first foray into her historical fiction and it has been a pleasurable, positive experience. I am an advocate of well executed historical fiction, where the factual basis is apparent and the fictional overlay allows greater access to the story, opening up the details of everyday life long ago in service to plot.

After his third wife died, Henry found himself in need of another wife and in a struggle to find a suitable mate. We read here of all the machinations from the point of view of the duchy of Kleve and princess Anna. There are the political and religious aspects, the current and anticipated future power plays, and, of course, Henry’s probable wish for another son. He only knows Anna through Holbein’s portrait.

This novel begins with a young Anna, with a hypothetical story that may not have happened as written but for which Weir provides background and some possible evidence. Some suspension of disbelief is required to fully enjoy this aspect of the story. But remember—this is historical fiction, not history.

What sets Weir apart in all of her writing is her attention to detail and her ability to incorporate it into a very readable text. I recognize the descriptions of wedding gifts and parade/displays from her history writing. Her descriptions of Anna’s travels and travails in England after her separation from Henry give such strong signs of reality (and the type of petty notes that were retained for centuries).

Through Anna of Kleve, we have a bird’s eye view of some of the major events of English history which Alison Weir has blended skillfully into this work of historical fiction. She also provides an afterword which summarizes her decision making in writing of Anna and the genesis of various plot elements.

All in all, I enjoyed the story of Anna very much. And I greatly appreciate Weir’s ability to use her extensive knowledge in this way. As I said above, I find historical fiction to be valuable when well done. This is valuable.

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review.

This is a beautiful book about Queen Anne the wife of Henry VIII, whom we know very little about. I enjoyed this book greatly as I love all of Alison Weir's books. This did not dissapoint. Fans of Allison Weir will enjoy this book.

I would like to thank netgalleyand the publisher for providing me with a copy free of charge. This is my honest and unbiased opinion of it.

There is an extremely shocking event that occurs in the beginning of this book that really blindsided me. As a passionate Tudor History lover, 4th wife Anna of Kleve is a bit of a mystery in comparison to some of King Henry VIII's more notorious wives. Alison Weir is an icon of British history authors, but has recently travelled the path of poetic license while presenting these historical fiction novels of King Henry VIII's six wives. She explains the leaps she took based on research materials in an "Author's Note" at the end of the book. The irony of the fact that information is scanty regarding this wife is that this book is an arduous almost 500 pages! I felt hard pressed to get through it as I neared the end, which isn't a good sign. I think this book would have done well to have been whittled down considerably.

After marrying for love on three previous occasions, all ending in disaster, King Henry VIII is urged to marry for political alliance purposes. Anna of Kleve in Germany is suggested by Thomas Cromwell, chief minister to the King. The King send his master painter Hans Holbein to paint a portrait of Anna so he can judge her likeness. In scores of historical documentaries and books over the centuries, it is said that perhaps Holbein painted her too favorably from the front, concealing her long nose and chin. In addition, as legend has it, on the marriage night when the King and Anna took to bed, he was turned off by her smell, sagging breasts and belly. He couldn't bring himself to consummate the marriage, which lasted just six months. Physical failings put aside, Anna was known for an even temperament, a patient, thoughtful and sensible character, and these favorable traits served her well when Henry put her aside. Upon their divorce, Anna was to be known as the King's "sister" and was provided several handsome estates in England and a generous income. She wasn't banished to unhealthy houses and ignored to die, wasn't beheaded, and didn't die post childbirth like Henry's previous wives. Because of her level-headedness and plain smarts, I always held a high regard for this wife that was never crowned. I was rather looking forward to the ride Alison Weir would take me on, but was sadly disappointed.

I asked myself if I was jaded from reading so many Tudor books over the decades. The endless minute details of Anna's windswept, rainy journey from Germany to England, as well as the various progresses she would take being introduced to the English public bored the hell out of me. Another thing that turned me off was hearing about all the elaborate homes Anna was given upon her divorce, much of which had belonged to people that were executed by order of the King, and some that used to be Catholic religious houses until Henry closed them all. I just kept thinking about the incredible waste of life.. moving every so often among these homes with staff to wait upon you... Perhaps I've just become cynical about all this.

I guess in summation my gripe with this book was it should have been at least 200 pages less. The author fleshed out what we know already about Anna of Kleve with another storyline that exploded at the beginning of the book. That initial spark really got my attention, but the endless political maneuvering at court, especially at the end of the book, had me skimming through the pages.

Thanks to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for an ARC of this book!

So, as much as I enjoy books about Henry VIII's wives and this Tudor time period in general, I'm starting to think I don't actually like the way Alison Weir writes about them. It's so hit or miss for me. her book Katherine of Aragón: The True Queen and Jane Seymour: The Haunted Queen enough to give them 4 stars, but I still had some problems, specifically that they were extraordinarily long. And then
Anne Boleyn: A King's Obsession was so strangely unhistorical for a historical fiction writer that also writes historical biographies that I gave it 3 stars. And now this book comes along, and I liked it, but gosh darn was this book way too long and often quite boring.

I really was interested to read this one, because as the description says, Anna is one of the least well-known of Henry VIII's wives and she escaped their 6 month marriage with her head, despite the fact that he really didn't like her all that much. And I loved getting to know Anna because I didn't know much about her before. I think the book did a great job bringing her to life and I'm so happy that the least known queen who probably had the best life of all of them now has a novel to her name. I'm definitely glad I read this book. But there really wasn't enough substance to her story and life for a book this long. Which is why the author started inventing stuff. Now, like with her book on Katherine, there seems to be some historical basis for (spoiler) Anna having one or more children as well as a lover, and not coming to Henry as a virgin. So I'm not totally against it, especially after reading the Author's Note, and this is historical FICTION, although there's WAY less basis for this theory than that Katherine didn't sleep with Arthur, which I disagree with. I haven't yet decided if I agree with this Anna theory.

Besides that invented storyline, Alison Weir really stuck to the historical record. Unfortunately for Anna, her life was kind of boring. The most exciting bit of it was when she was married to King Henry, so I don't know why Alison Weir didn't have them married until 31% into the book and had them divorced by 52%. I know their marriage WAS short, but the book becomes SO boring before and after the king is in the picture. It could have been focused on more for the sake of the interesting-ness of the book, or just make this darn book shorter. Interesting things were only mentioned in passing, like what happened between Elizabeth and Thomas Seymour. This makes sense because Anna wasn't even there, but that particular interesting thing in history won't even be covered in the Katharine Parr book because she was dead at this point. I know Anna didn't go to court much, and I applaud the historical accuracy, but when a book is already making big stuff up, I don't know why a little more embellishment couldn't have been done to make it interesting.

So much of the second half of the book is about Anna's debts and how she can't afford things and desperately needs help and money from Henry and then Edward and then Mary to continue to support her household. It's not an interesting storyline, and it's practically the only storyline. Besides the other boring and random storyline of her feud with Thomas Cawarden, which KEPT COMING UP and I just didn't care about how he liked a certain house that belonged to Anna and they fought over who could cut down the trees. It wasn't interesting.

And so that's why overall this can't be more than a 3 star book for me. I want to like this series because no one that I know of has undertaken devoting an entire book to each one of Henry VIII's wives. But I don't know why [author:Alison Weir|6583] insists on making the books so long, especially when there's not enough story to tell. I'm hesitantly looking forward to her :Katheryn Howard book, because I think her life was more interesting than Anna of Kleve's, but I'm also expecting that book to be entirely too long.

I've read the whole series so far, this is book four. I was excited to read Anna's story, though I know it well. I usually learn something new each time I read about King Henry VIII 's wives. I was disappointed at how this Princess born lady was characterized, especially in the beginning. Of course anything is possible, but I found it a little far fetched. Hopefully Katherine Howard 's story will be better!
I received an ARC of this book from Netgalley. Thank you, Netgalley!
All opinions are my own.

This has everything I already love about an Alison Weir book. Anna of Kleve tells a great story about the least well known (in my opinion) of Henry’s wives. Not only was they story well written as always and enjoyable but I’ve also learned quite a bit from this one!

Anna of Kleve: The Princess in the Portrait is the fourth book in the "Six Tudor Queens"series written by Alison Weir. In this book, Henry VIII is older with medical issues and he has just suffered the loss of his wife, Jane Seymour. He now has to marry again and he chooses Anna, only after he sees a portrait of her. She arrives in England, is married to the king but Henry has the marriage annulled and she is allowed to live out her life in a comfortable fashion. Obviously, she is the "lucky" queen when it comes to Henry VIII. I have enjoyed reading Alison Weir's stories in the past. She always presents a beautiful picture of a historical figure based on research. I really didn't know that much about Anna of Kleve and found the book to be very interesting. The only reason I gave it three stars is because I thought the story dragged a bit and kept the same problems in Anna's life popping up (redundantly) throughout the story. Still, I do recommend this book as well as any other written by Alison Weir. She is a phenomenal writer and her extensive research makes her books excellent reading!

I’m a huge fan of the Six Tudor Queens series overall. I love the way Alison Weir focuses on each queen separately and really makes them the heroine of their own story. That said, I was the tiniest bit disappointed with Anna of Kleve. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a great book. I just had very high expectations going in since the previous three books in this series were so good.

I think the reason I didn’t love this novel quite as much as I was hoping to is simply that Anna of Kleve didn’t really have a lot going on. Compared to Anne Boleyn, her life was downright boring. I don’t think this had anything to do with Weir’s writing or research abilities, I just think she didn’t have a lot to work with here. However, this book is a whopping 496 pages and I think it could have been much shorter. I had a hard time caring about all of the property disputes – of which there were many – and it felt the majority of this book dragged on.

Anna’s marriage to King Henry was the least exciting part of the book, because almost nothing happens. But I did really enjoy the beginning and the end of this novel, which is more about Anna’s personal life outside of her marriage (exciting stuff). Being the history nerd I am, I spent a lot of time Googling after finishing this book, and was disappointed to find very little evidence of the events/relationship Weir recounts in this novel. Weir states in the author’s note that she essentially fabricated some of the story, but found historical evidence that may support it. Still, this is a fictionalized story of real historical figures, so it is up to the author how to tell that story. And Weir is an experienced historian, so I trust her to be as faithful to history as she feels is necessary.

While I do wish this book was a bit more compact – too much of it felt far too slow, especially looking back at how fast I flew through the first three books in this series – I do think it is a great novel. I did enjoy the story, regardless of whether or not it is 100% historically accurate. Because, really, what we know for sure about Anna’s life would not have made a very engaging novel, and I’m glad Weir brought some excitement to the story.

After the death of Henry's beloved third wife, Jane Seymour, the aging and ponderous monarch searches for a new bride who can increase his count of heirs. Anna of Kleve, a young woman from one of the small German principalities becomes the chosen one, and what follows is the story of a woman who was rejected almost as soon as she was married.

I struggled to maintain interest in this book (spoilers ahead). The author's choice to have Anne birth an illegitimate child while in her teens was highly speculative and somewhat offputting. This was coupled with a historical writing style that was highly literal and had little symbolism and foreshadowing. Many times, the narrative contained specific and lengthy descriptions of items and clothing, and though doubtless designed to create an atmosphere, it often felt like an info dump.

While the first person narrator (Anna) felt fully fleshed out as a character, the speculative nature of the initial events shed doubt on whether the character shown in the book was anything like the original wife of Henry VIII. Henry himself is adequately repulsive, alternating between kindness and cruelty. Cromwell was interesting, but fairly flat. Anne's retainers from Kleve were my favorite characters in the book.

Fans of Alison Weir's earlier books in the Six Tudor Queens series will enjoy seeing the story of Henry's fourth wife as well as the introduction of young Katheryn Howard (soon to be the fifth).

Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley. All opinions expressed in this review are my own.

The latest Alison Weir novel, and it’s just as enthralling as her previous installments. Anna of Kleve comes to life in this enchanting portrait, fleshing out a character that is often glossed over in favor of more controversial characters. You won’t be disappointed!