Gilt (review)

In the "maiden's room" of the duchess of Norfolk's Tudor manor, which houses the young female relatives, everything revolves around magnetic Cat Howard, the self-dubbed "Queen of Misrule." Narrator Kitty Tylney, another room resident, is Cat's best friend, and she watches with admiration, envy, and a little concern as Cat manages to wangle a place at court in the service of Henry VIII's new queen—and then to replace her as Henry's new wife. Now in Queen Catherine's retinue, Kitty moves uneasily among amoral courtiers and fears for her friend as Cat's self-willed arrogance leads her into danger. Longshore paints doomed Catherine Howard as a manipulative queen bee out of her depth, whose arrogance and entitlement blind her to the needs—and power—of others. It's not a deep portrayal, but Cat is compelling even as she's unsympathetic; in fact, she completely overshadows Kitty, whose romantic travails (she's torn between a sexy bad-boy courtier and a high-minded guy from home) are protracted and comparatively uninteresting, dragging the book's pace to a crawl. Longshore, who's clearly done her historical homework, takes full advantage of the Tudor standards (it opens with Kitty's witnessing a rape by a courtier) and surroundings (there's plenty of lush detailing of Cat's queenly wardrobe), but Cat is a completely contemporary American teenager with her dislike of "bitchy girls" and her interest in men being "great in bed." The book focuses on the high-school priorities of girlfriends and boyfriends, keeping the king and more serious issues—his children, the era's intense religious divisions—peripheral. It's therefore a very different exploration than Libby's poignant The King's Rose (BCCB 3/09), but it's an enjoyable, if slow-paced, example of chick-lit in costume.