Gilt by Katherine Longshore Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“Because it is human nature to believe the first story heard, and not its rebuttal.”- Gilt, Katherine Longshore

In the court of King Henry VIII, nothing is free--
and love comes at the highest price of all. 

When Kitty Tylney's best friend, Catherine Howard, worms her way into King Henry VIII's heart and brings Kitty to court, she's thrust into a world filled with fabulous gowns, sparkling jewels, and elegant parties. No longer stuck in Cat's shadow, Kitty's now caught between two men--the object of her affection and the object of her desire. But court is also full of secrets, lies, and sordid affairs, and as Kitty witnesses Cat's meteoric rise and fall as queen, she must figure out how to keep being a good friend when the price of telling the truth could literally be her head.

My AP Euro teacher kicked off our unit on the English Reformation with a story about Henry VIII. At the time, pants came in two pieces, and in the middle, holding it all together, would be a codpiece. Apparently, Henry VIII ordered that no courtier was allowed to have a bigger codpiece than his own. That story says a lot about Henry VIII, who is likely the most famous king England ever had.

Apart from a phase in 7th grade where I idolized Elizabeth I, I can't say the Tudors have ever really captured my attention. Nowadays, my interest lies in the Edwardian times, the Roaring Twenties, and Russia (anywhere/anytime Russia), but I still have a small nostalgia-bred affection for the Tudors, so I was interested in picking this book up. It is part of a loose threesome of companion novels, all taking place during the reign of Henry VIII, and this is the least elusive of the three. When I picked it up, I was in the right place to read something like this- Rumors had exceeded my expectations, and that always puts me in a good mood to start a new novel from an author I am unfamiliar with, especially a YA author, since they usually aren't critically acclaimed like adult authors usually are (no hate, just the truth). Right away, though, my main problem appeared. Kitty. I didn't like her as a narrator very much. Normally, I like it when a side character is the narrator, and that tactic is typically used for character studies, which I love. But Longshore gave Kitty an actual storyline and too much personality to make her a good character study-esque narrator. I mean, Truman Capote didn't insert 100 pages of himself doing other things that had nothing to do with Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's. Because Holly Golightly is the main character, regardless of who the narrator is, just like Catherine Howard should be the main character, not Kitty. I found myself skipping most of her interactions with William and even Edmund just to get to the story I was really interested in, the story of Catherine Howard. There was a lot of background stuff that made the first 150-200 pages a super quick read. 

Quite a lot of the parts with Kitty were super contrived, especially when she encounters Thomas Culpeper raping a peasant woman. It was extremely unlikely she would have encountered this in the first place, and now many historians believe that the rapist was actually Culpeper's older brother, who was also named Thomas (please tell me I'm not the only one who finds that funny). I felt as if Kitty was also really inconsistent as a character, since she goes from being really angry at Cat and hating her to getting mad when others insinuated that Cat's downfall was her fault. There were a few other unnecessary bits with Kitty that also distracted from the story, and in my opinion she should have been scrapped all together. 

I came close to giving this book a solid 5/10 a few times, because I liked the court intrigue and the pretty dresses and especially the parts that dealt with Catherine Howard's downfall, but the thing that mostly held me back was Kitty. As soon as something interesting would happen, a few scenes later we were back in Kitty's dull, dull world. I did like some things, like the more sympathetic view of Henry VIII, something that usually isn't seen in Tudor-era literature, and that Catherine Howard was shown as someone who deserved what she got. Longshore definitely did her homework, also evidenced by her author's note in the back, and most of the problems I saw with her writing were common debut errors that are usually smoothed out by the sophomore novel. The only serious error I saw was, again, the inconsistency of Kitty's voice and her character as a whole. I will still read Tarnish, when I can track down a paper copy of it at least, and probably Brazen after that. Hopefully I will like both more than Gilt.

4.5-5 out of 10