An enjoyable book with an interesting premise. Very historically accurate with a little bit of license taken.

I was born in the 50's and have vivid memories of watching "I Love Lucy" as a kid. This book brought back so many of them. I enjoyed reading it. But I am not sure I wanted to read about some guy's grandfathers romance with her? So what? The time jumps were also confusing. It's a readable book, but doesn't quite work...

Hiding behind a stellar title is the sad story of Lucille Ball, America's beloved "I Love Lucy" heroine. And also some guy from Long Island. I guess it is his story too, but it reads like yet another guy is stealing the thunder from a woman. What could have been a fantastic feminist story of TV's OG girl boss mogul is an awkward narration of affairs and betrayal. The story of your grandfather's supposed/alleged/possible affair with an American Icon is a great dinner party topic, but it is a separate story from "I Love Lucy" starring Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. There are excellent details from the time period making a strong case for historical fiction, but the presentation of the story was overselling "I Love Lucy" and not quite living up to the hype. I wanted to love this book and buy multiple copies to give as gifts to all the fans in my life. There's a great story in here somewhere, but there's a secondary tale that is fighting for top billing.

The Queen of Tuesday depicts an interesting concept: Lucille Ball having an affair with the author's grandfather. I found the scenes with Lucy in them the most interesting to read. I think the author depicted Desi fairly accurately. I found the relationship between Strauss and his wife Harriet to be sad. Ball was a formidable woman and it's hard to believe she's been gone for over thirty years. This novel was a good aspect of venturing down the what if path.

Having grown up in Buffalo, NY, a stone’s throw away from Lucille Ball’s Jamestown home, I am a big Lucy fan. When I saw this book on @Netgalley, I knew I had to read it. I was beyond thrilled to receive a copy.⁣⁣⁣⁣
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Sadly, this book was nothing like the synopsis. If I went into this book knowing it was more of a story of the author’s grandfather’s alleged affair with Lucille Ball and less about the fictional history of Lucy and Desi, I doubt I would have originally requested it. There were many things that this book unnecessarily got wrong. I understand the need to alter timelines and use fictional dialogue and really don’t take too much issue with that. However, when rather interesting and actual dialogue was used in a situation where it did not originally take place ... even though it would have worked as it originally played out ... it really is a turn off. As others have said, this would have played out better had the author used a fictionalized famous couple instead of Lucy and Desi. ⁣⁣⁣⁣
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Awkwardly written at times, difficult to distinguish whose voice I was hearing sometimes, it lost me here and there. I really wanted to love this book. It was one I saved to read once school was over because it gave me something to look forward to. ⁣⁣⁣⁣
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I am sad to say that, although I love Lucy, I was not a fan of this book. I am rating it ⭐️⭐️⭐️/5.⁣⁣ because, although I didn’t love the book, you might love it. ⁣⁣⁣⁣
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Thank you to @Netgalley and @randomhouse for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.⁣⁣⁣
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Pub date: August 18, 2020⁣⁣
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I received this from Netgalley.com for a review.

"This indelible romance begins with a daring conceit—that the author’s grandfather may have had an affair with Lucille Ball. Strauss offers a fresh view of a celebrity America loved more than any other."

This was mostly fiction with the only fact being that Lucy and Desi were real people. I was expecting an autobiography, this book is not that. This was not an easy read, I struggled a bit with the flow of the story and then spent way too much time fact checking when in reality, there were no facts.

2☆

I had trouble getting into this one. It was not written in the way I expected, and I found it hard to follow. I am giving this one a pass.

I really did not like this book. I finished it because I thought it may turn around, but it was disjointed and did not hold my interest whatsoever.

The tight language felt almost like being shot by an old fashioned machine gun, with occasional pauses where the language evokes an image while the author reloads only to destroy any sense of scene or sense that was created. This was unreadable.

Perhaps its a shortcoming of promotion, but this book was not at all what I expected it to be. I found it a slow slog and eventually gave up, because, ya know, even with lockdown, my time has value. I'm sure this will appeal to someone else, but it was not what I wanted to read. Thank you for the Advance Review Copy. I don't post negative reviews on goodreads or social media, so no link will be provided.

This book is being marketed as a romance, a love story. I say, really? There are elements of that in it, to be sure, but in some ways this book is quite the opposite. The story is two-fold. One part is a part-fictional, small-part memoir of the author's grandfather, who may or may not have had an affair with Lucille Ball. They met at a party in New York, before she was nearly as famous as she would later become. He was established in his real estate career, married, with children. She too was already married, and focused on making herself (and Desi) a rising star in the acting world. But they caught each other's attention and a slight obsession followed. The book jumps through the years, following both, and interspersed with the author's own story of talking to his dying grandfather (the one who, as a younger man, is a character in the larger story - don't worry, it's not as confusing as it sounds).

Do Lucille and the author's grandfather ever get together? Well, such is the stuff that stories are made of. Did any of this really happen? That's a more complicated question. What is the responsibility to truth of an author of historical fiction? Strauss is completely clear that he doesn't know the truth of the matter, but he also acknowledges fudging such fundamental facts of the day of the week on which I Love Lucy aired. And why? That particular detail is absolutely not relevant to the plot, so why bother to change a fact of history. To me, that calls the entire enterprise of this book into doubt. Maybe he did that on purpose, since he himself doesn't know the truth of the possible relationship between his grandfather and Lucille Ball.

Setting the absolute truth aside, this is a very readable story. It follows Lucille Ball through her early struggles with Desi and her career, into her stardom, and through the collapse of her marriage, even as she continues to grow more powerful in Hollywood. It follows Isidore Strauss, mostly through a family lens, as his children grow and his wife becomes an alcoholic. Either of these stories separately might have made good reading. Tying them together is something of a conceit on the author's part, and it doesn't quite work.

The Queen of Tuesday immediately caught my eye. I love Lucille Ball and I was so excited to read this book. I wanted to love it so badly, but I didn't. I found the writing difficult to follow and sadly it just didn't work for me. Thank you for the opportunity to read this and provide my honest review.

This is a historical novel that, based on the subtitle and the description, is about Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. I am a big fan of this couple and so was looking forward to an entertaining, factual/fictional look at their lives. I was disappointed when I realized that most of the book involves a fictional affair between Lucy and the author's grandfather, an affair that early in the book is described in almost pornographic detail, images that are unfortunately now ingrained in my head. The writing is odd and disjointed and confusing, jumping around haphazardly between Lucy and Desi's lives and the paramour's life. Very disappointing. Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for providing an ARC.

As much as I love watching re-runs of I Love Lucy and love Lucille Ball, I wasn't a huge fan of this book. I was excited to learn more about Lucille Ball, but the writing style/organization of the book was a bit disjointed for me. The book seemed to focus more on setting the stage for the story versus actually showing what the story is about (telling vs. showing).

The whole time I was reading this book, all I could think was that it was a missed opportunity. I was expecting a historical fiction book centered around Lucille Ball. That's not really what this book is at all. It does have Lucille Ball as a main character, but this book is mostly about the men in her life- a man that she had a strange relationship with and her husband. I kept wanting the book to be about her life- her ground breaking successes and her struggles. After I finished the disappointing book, I read the afterword where the author explains how he fictionalized his grandfather. I wish I had read about his background and motivations first so that my expectations of this book were better aligned. I would hope other readers can have a better understanding of what this book is going in so that they might like it more than I did.

Thank you to NetGalley for the free copy.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the eARC.
I grew up watching reruns of I Love Lucy and seeked out other things she did. I absolutely love her talent, so I was excited to read this book. I am sorry but I just could not finish it. It seemed disjointed and the character development was lacking. I felt that the writing was telling me a story with words on a page instead of showing me the story and letting it soak into my mind and take me away. It felt superficial. I think the concept is a great concept but the delivery needs work.

"Lucille Ball starred in America’s first big-time interracial love story; was the first powerful woman in Hollywood; that she owned more movie sets at one point than did any movie studio." A star-studded event that led Isidore Strauss to an encounter with the rising star Lucille Ball. The Queen of Tuesday is based on America's love affair with the Comedian Icon, Lucille Ball but at the same time revealing the price of this fame. "Fame, lonely independence, those had been hers—had it been worth it." As one reads, you step into the lives of Isidore and Lucille and wonder if they were star crossed lovers or was this just part of an infatuation with the Queen of Comedy.

I am a Lucille Ball lover (I've even been to her hometown and museum), so I was anxious to read this book. I loved parts of it, specifically the Lucille Ball/ Desi Arnaz storyline, but tired quickly from the Isadore Strauss storyline. I do understand why it is part of the book, especially reading the end and realizing that he really is a relative of the author; it is partly his family's story. However, I did loved the story of I Love Lucy and the relationship of Lucy and Desi as well as Fred and Ethel (William Frawley and Vivian Vance). The book did reinforce the fact that we still love Lucy.

In this novel Isidore Strauss (the author's grandfather) meets the real life Lucille Ball at a party thrown by none other that Fred Trump Sr. This ignites an affair that brings debilitating guilt to Isidore and ends when his wife discovers the piece of paper with Lucille's number hidden in Isidore's tool box. While the book gives interesting insights into Lucille Ball's life, I feel the author was presumptuous to create a fictional story about such an iconic figure. It was also slow reading that lacked in plot development. The chapter inserts by Isidore's grandson were also confusing. I wasn't sure who was talking until he identifies himself at the end.

This book was not like I thought it was going to be. Very different. I love Lucille Ball and like to read anything new about her. This is a story that tells her story, in case you did not know how she starts in show business.