Tarnish by Katherine Longshore Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“I will no longer be judged by the standards of others. I will judge myself. I will not live by someone else's rules. I will make my own.”- Tarnish, Katherine Longshore

Anne Boleyn is the odd girl out. Newly arrived to the court of King Henry VIII, everything about her seems wrong, from her clothes to her manners to her witty but sharp tongue. So when the dashing poet Thomas Wyatt offers to coach her on how to shine at court—and to convince the whole court they’re lovers—she accepts. Before long, Anne’s popularity has soared, and even the charismatic and irresistible king takes notice. More than popularity, Anne wants a voice—but she also wants love. What began as a game becomes high stakes as Anne finds herself forced to make an impossible choice between her heart’s desire and the chance to make history. 

I actually like the covers of these books. I like the way they look on the shelf together too. But as a whole, I don't think I really like the books themselves.

I wasn't expecting to read this book next. But I didn't want to start my Valentine's Day book until it was closer to actual Valentine's Day so I pulled this book off my TBR stack and figured it would be a quick read. I ended up having to finish it at 10 o'clock at night because I didn't want to carry reading it into Monday. This book was not the quick read Gilt was for me. Frankly this book could have been cut down at least 100 pages and still would have made a cohesive narrative. But I am seeing some writing issues that I can't write off as rookie mistakes any more. I can tell that Longshore has a problem with repetition. The overused sheep metaphor was used a lot, as well as the whole idea of being trapped and the amount of times the word tarnish (or a form of the word) appeared made me want to take a shot every time it showed up. I also noticed a big problem with Longshore's dialogue, and that is that she'll have some really authentic-sounding dialogue, and it really fits in well with the time period and then all of sudden modern words and phrases will jarringly appear. I noticed it in Gilt, but dismissed it as an easy fix. The fix never happened, so now I have to talk about it. Bad, Longshore, bad.

Anne was another big problem. One Goodreads reviewer commented that it seemed like Anne had been declawed, and that is true. The Anne in this novel seemed like some feminist, too modern for the time she grew up in. That is false, and frankly insulting to the real Anne Boleyn, who was so much more than that. I wish this book had portrayed her as the ruthless social climber she probably was instead of foisting her into this role of a whiny girl who just wanted love and especially Daddy's love. She would never have truly fallen for a poet, she was more pragmatic than that. She aimed far higher than that. I also snorted with laughter at her whole "Mary (as in Henry's daughter Mary) will be queen" speech. She hated her stepdaughter, and the only reason why she would have been in favor of a queen was because of her own daughter. I think I also laughed because the whole speech was about how women might be better leaders than men, but then you realize she's arguing for a woman who ordered the death of hundreds of Protestants at the stake and placed her own half sister (Anne's daughter, nonetheless) under house arrest, earning the nickname Bloody Mary. I guess women aren't better leaders after all. I was also disappointed that a key part of her personality was left out and that was her Protestantism. Anne was a huge champion of Erasmus, and often gave her lady's maids his pamphlets or work to read.

I noticed that whenever Longshore wants to show that so and so is a bad guy she overdoes it, like with James Butler. Yeah, he probably wasn't a peach, but she way over did it. His sexism was laughable because it was so over the top. Also, the fat and undesirable potential fiance? Someone's read Catherine Called Birdy, I see. I also didn't really care about Thomas Wyatt, and all the romantic scenes with him just made this book drag. I wanted more court intrigue, not more romance for a couple that didn't work out. And then there was Anne's heel-face love for Henry. She literally went from being in lurve with Wyatt to falling hard for the king out of nowhere. Both Gilt and Tarnish lagged horribly in the middle, and I think it's because a whole lotta nothing happened. Which normally, I'm fine with, but I have to actually give a damn about the characters and the nothing that fills those pages can't be romance, because romance is even more boring than no plot at all. 

So what do I like? As much as I didn't like Anne, I liked that she was in fact the narrator and not some side character like in Gilt. It made the story feel more centralized. I liked Longshore's author note at the end. As I mentioned in my Gilt review, it is nice to see Henry VIII portrayed the way he is in these books. I liked George, and I liked their sibling relationship, even if it isn't entirely accurate. George and Wyatt's friends were great, and they reminded me of the Life or Death Brigade from the Gilmore Girls, which I loved. And of course, the costume porn was great, even if I did get annoyed by Anne's critique of the ceruse, especially the medical effects of it. It's unlikely that Anne would know that the make-up caused women's hair and teeth to fall out, especially since this is a pre-Enlightenment society when medicine was very, very primital. 

I'm still going to read Brazen, mostly because, and I have to hand it to Longshore, these books are hella addictive. I also think she has interesting ideas that lack in execution. Once I've finished Brazen, which I already ordered, I'll write my final thoughts on the series, but I feel like right now I'm continuing with the series because I have to, not because I want to.

5 out of 10