Henry VIII's Imprisoned Women is a non fiction book about 6 women who were imprisoned in the Tower of London during the reign of Henry VIII.
I love the Tudor peiod so was eager to read this book. The majority of the information was not new to me but I was thrilled to discover the tale of Alice Tankerville and the reference to the Vaux Passional, neither of which I had heard of before.
The book begins with a history of the Tower of London and the main events and prominent people of Henry VIII's early life and reign. The book then looks at the specific Tower experiences of Alice Tankerville, Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth Barton, Katheryn Howard, Margaret Pole and Anne Askew. Incredible women with powerful stories.
The research that has gone into the book is obvious. However, the writing itself was a bit clunky at times with either non sequiturs or repeated phrases within the sentence. The use of language was odd on occasion, sometimes being chatty and other times being high brow. Some words made no sense (women do not sire children!) I also felt that there were some omissions, for example the discussion of Elizabeth of York's life jumped several years and left out her marriage and coronation.
Henry VIII's Imprisoned Women is an enjoyable book but history buffs may be frustrated at the style and missing detail.

This book was disappointing. I found a few mistakes re: “facts” that were presented & the writing could've been more concise.

Thank you Net Galley & to the publisher for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I want to rate this book higher as I love reading about Tudor England and learning about it but there are a lot of small technical factual errors that make me concerned about how well researched the book actually is, especially on the lesser known cases.

Example multiple times it's stated that Princess Mary Tudor, King Henry's daughter, is stepsister to Prince Edward, when they are actually half-siblings. It's the little errors that ruin an otherwise good or passable informative book.

The details in this book are very well researched and it was good to read about the lesser known women in Henry VIII's life as well as the more famous ones and also their experiences in the Tower of London. I am very much a Tudor fan so read as much as I can so it was good to read about people I didn't necessarily know as much. A great read. Thoroughly enjoyed it

First of all, I received this as a free copy from Netgalley and for that I am very grateful….because I would have not been impressed to pay full price for it.

First of all, I found it rambled. It repeated information I had already read in earlier chapters, which makes the book confusing. I found myself querying some of the information as being inaccurate. As though the author was putting their own theories out there as fact. The author acknowledged that they find Anne Boleyn fascinating and that section was by far the biggest one to the detriment of the other women in the book.

What was the point of the comments in the brackets, they added nothing to the narrative and I hope that they were not in the actual book.

A well researched book which explores life in medieval Europe.I would thoroughly recommend this book to anyone interested in history.many interesting facts brought to light which had me spellbound.

I enjoyed this but I think that it was missing some consistency throughout, especially w/r to spelling conventions. There's also little new for long-time Tudor fans, but great for people who are more casual about them. I think it just needs to be edited more finely and then it would be 3.5 at least

I want to thank Netgalley and the author for gifting me the ebook. Love the cover. This was a fascinating read! The author did a great job researching and writing. I love everything Tudor so when I can find a book from that time period (fiction/non-fiction) I am all over it. Highly recommend

Henry VIII's Imprisoned Women was a "wished for" book, and I was happy to receive an ARC for my honest opinion of it. I love history, and am absolutely fascinated with all things Tudor. Neha Roy's subject, women, is a much-needed subject from a time when women were not as well recorded as men.
This is a well-researched book and absolutely fascinating. I knew of most of the women's stories, but Anne Askew and Alice Tankerville I have never read about or seen anything documentary-wise about, so I was really impressed how well-researched Neha Roy went. Learning more about Margaret Pole and her well-cared for stay at the tower yet still executed was really interesting. The writing is really good and keeps you interested in the subject.
I really enjoyed this and would recommend to readers who are interested in Luther-era religious change, Tudor history, English history or women's history. This would be great as an audiobook as well, which I will be on the lookout for after the publishing date-- I'd love to have another read while I'm commuting or doing chores around the house! This is a great addition to the stories of women through history.

I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting when I picked up this book, but it wasn't really what I got. I think I was hoping for something exploring the role of women in Tudor England, with detailed analysis about what these women might have had in common, why they threatened the monarchy, why they had to be imprisoned, etc. Something that really fleshed out a new level of my understanding of Tudor England society. But that wasn't really what the book did. There was a history of the Tower, a biography of Henry VIII, quick summaries of the main people and highlights of his reign, and then we got to six women who were imprisoned. Anne Boleyn and Katheryn Howard get the most page time-including entire histories of their families. Personally I found that interesting but not actually something that fit in this book. Same for Margaret Pole's family history-by the time she's thrown in the Tower you've completely lost the thread of the book's theme. The other women have much less written about them and nothing really analyzing their lives or why they were imprisoned.

I know this was an advanced copy, but I was disappointed in the writing. Awkward word choices, sentence structure, and repetition add together to make things confusing. Events are placed out of order, dates and people are not always correct. The author insists on the correct way of spelling the "Wydeville", then uses "Woodville" interchangeably. Notes in the book from someone (maybe an editor?)suggest that there is still work to be done, but I thought that was both interesting and unusual since you don't generally see that in an advance.

Overall, not a book I'd recommend when there are better written books out there that will provide the same information and you'll feel confident that everything is correct. This book did not inspire me with that level of confidence.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

Very interesting story but there wasn’t a lot of new information. I still enjoyed reading the a lot.

Thank you NetGalley, author and publisher for enabling me to read this book.

I love to read anything Tudor related so I immediately applied once I saw this book. A look at the women in Henry VIIIs life and what they experienced in the Tower of London. I love that it includes stories about women who haven’t always been discussed in detail. If you are a Tudor or history fan, I’m sure you will enjoy this book and learn something new!

Thanks to Netgalley, the author, and the publisher for my copy of this book for my honest review. I actually forgot what I was supposed to be reading about (the women in the Tower during Henry VIII’s reign) because I was enjoying reading about the Tower of London itself. Then BAM here are some ladies who died. No appropriate Segway at all. Way too abrupt considering all the business in the beginning was not relatable for me. I understand why it needed to be discussed it was just way too disjointed. Also I did not realize that I already knew the women that psycho king interred. That there weren’t any others. So that dream shattered. I also red a few sentences that made me pause because they were close to twisting what is acceptable to historians just to get that part of the narrative moving regardless of truth, so I was certainly not impressed with that. So all in all I’m questioning whether I was the right audience.

Interesting that the Tudors, and chiefly Henry VIII, still hold such a fascination for the modern reader, be it in fiction or in historical studies. Even books like this one that deal with only a particular aspect of his reign will always draw in curious readers, no matter what. I for one admit to be such a reader.

The main subject of this book wasn’t new to me. In one way or another, most writers of Tudor fiction or history tackle the destinies of people such as not only the two hapless queens Anne Boleyn and Kathryn Howard, but also the Nun of Kent or Margaret Pole, to quote but these four women. The promise of a study focussing on these women in the Tower was therefore alluring.

And Neha Roy didn’t disappoint me. The author first gave a short overview of what preceded Henry VIII’s accession to the throne and described the history of the Tower. Then came the different “case studies” which were the main topic, each with explanations and life stories that remained sufficiently short to be rather easy to follow, with the notable exception of Lady Pole, whose background of course needed a broader exposition, which the author delivered. But that part was, I’m afraid, almost too rushed, and I was glad I already knew most of the persons involved; otherwise, I would have had a hard time following all the different strands of the story.

All in all, the book was well researched, as far as I, a mere amateur historian, could judge it, and written in an unfastidious, relatable, and sometimes even entertaining way that made it a pleasure to read. I was provided an ARC in what I guess an early stage of the editing and publication process, so to my amusement, I found some leftover questions and annotations added by either the proofreader or the editor in brackets (short sentences like “What do you mean?”). First, I thought it shoddy and annoying, but I confess that after a while I was almost loking forward to the next one because it gave me an insight into the working process of both the author and the team of the publishing house. I’m uncertain whether I should hope those annotations will be taken care of before the book is released, or not (they somehow added a probably unwanted entertainment factor for me).

All in all, I enjoyed the read even though, as mentioned before, the section about Margaret Pole was a teensy bit more complicated to follow. I’d recommend it however to all those interested in broadening their knowledge of those times.

Fascinating and interesting, this book will also delve into the history of the Tower of London, provide a brief glimpse into the life of Tudor women and also into the lives of some noteworthy people of that era.

A short but interesting and informative book about the women who were imprisoned by He ray VIII for real or imagined offenses. The more interesting women on this book are the ones that have not been figures of extensive biographies, like Margaret Pole.

The Tudor period is one of the most notable periods in British History with Henry the 8th being one fo the most notorious Monarchs of all time due to his tyranny and brutality. However what I loved about this book is, although it was about Henry in some respect it was more about the women that he had imprisoned and suffered because of him and his tyranny.
The book was full of interesting information and included some of the women that I previously knew about as well as many that I didn't and I found it fascinating, without being too heavy loaded.

This was interesting read on history of Henry VIII. The author gave an in depth history of the Tower of London from when it was first built to Henry VIII’s time.

We get to read about some of the lesser known figures executed during Henry VIII’s reign all of which were women.

These were brutal times for sure and it was interesting reading about the constant court intrigue that was happening.

The surprise in this book was the amount of time spent on 100 years war. I was not expecting that.

Overall good historical read.

Thank you NetGalley for ‘making my wish come true’ with advance copy to read. These opinions are mine.

A look at how women were treated in Tudor England including two of Henry VIII's wives Katharine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn. Even being a queen couldn't save you if your husband wanted to get rid of you.

Henry VIII is one of the most written-about British monarchs and this book adds detailed information about the many women he harmed in his life. There was a lot of new information, for me, beyond the well known experiences of his many wives and it was clearly well researched and well presented. An excellent addition to the genre,