The most famous necklace in the world has finally been found…
Bryher Finch’s life isn’t just a disaster, it’s a catastrophe, until a chance invitation to chart her family tree changes everything. As Bryher uncovers the ancestry she never knew about, she stumbles on the find of the century – Anne Boleyn’s ‘B’ necklace, as enigmatic as Henry VIII’s most notorious Queen herself.
But Bryher isn’t the only one who wants the necklace…
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Adrienne Chinn was born in Grand Falls, Newfoundland, grew up in Quebec, and eventually made her way to London, England after a career as a journalist. In England she worked as a TV and film
researcher before embarking on a career as an interior designer, lecturer, and writer. When not up a ladder or at the computer writing, she often can be found rummaging through flea markets or
haggling in the Marrakech souk.
Her debut novel, The Lost Letter, was published in 2019. Her second novel, the international bestseller, The English Wife, was published in 2020. Her third novel, Love in a Time of War, the first in a series of four books in The Three Fry Sisters series, was published in 2022.
The second book in the series, The Paris Sister, was published in 2023, and the third book, In the Shadow of War, was published in March 2024.
Her next book, a historical timeslip novel, The Queen’s Necklace, will be published in September 2025, followed by the fourth book in The Three Fry Sisters series, set during WWII, in 2026.
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My thoughts: Bryher is a bit of a miserable cow at the beginning, she’s clearly been set up but acts enough like a spoilt brat that it’s hard to empathise with her, at first. As she adjusts to her new reality in a version of the UK that seems to be a blend of actual modern Britain and the 1950s (especially when it comes to cousin Betty, who hasn’t joined the 21st century) and the role as Anne Boleyn in a new mini series, she stops being quite so stroppy and brattish. Thankfully.
The dual timeline narrative where sisters Anne and Mary Boleyn live is interesting although they seem very cruel to each other, especially Anne to Mary, which might have been how they were, considering their father constantly compared them to one another (he was such a great dad).
The link is the infamous Boleyn B necklace, worn in several portraits of Anne, lost somewhere in time (probably dismantled and fashioned into other jewellery) and somehow amongst the gems and trinkets hidden in cousin Betty’s mother’s jewellery box.
Betty and Bryher are distant cousins, both descendants of Mary Boleyn’s line (Anne has no direct descendants of course, her daughter Elizabeth I famously the Virgin Queen), whose children had lots of children themselves and whose eldest daughter might have been Henry VIII’s.
But the necklace is desired both in Tudor times and in Bryher’s. Anne takes it from Mary before eventually giving it to her niece, Catherine shortly before her execution (in this story) and Bryher tries to stop two rather unscrupulous men taking it, although she trusts the wrong one. Thank heavens for cousin Betty.
Speaking of cousin Betty, her constant refrain about being family shifts Bryher’s view of her own past, the difficult relationships she had with her mother and sister, the hardships and struggles they had. It softens her as a person and makes her less heartless, more sympathetic, her life has been mostly struggle and just as she thought things were getting better, it’s all been ripped away. I liked her more by this point.
It’s an interesting take on the Boleyn narrative, Anne’s family was pretty awful, her father always scheming to get wealth and power, using his children as pawns. Which ended with two of them executed and the surviving one estranged. The name of Boleyn besmirched for centuries.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
ramblingmads 