I don't know why I didn't like this book. It just kinda sucked. I didn't like a lot of the subplots that have very little basis in history. Just a disappointment. I really did like Innocent Traitor. But this one just did not do it for me at all.

Weir takes too many liberties,even for a piece of fiction, for my taste. While I enjoy reading about QE1, I did not care for the slippery narration and ungraceful pov mishaps.

good book, bit fanciful at times. enjoyable read nevertheless

I really enjoyed The Lady Elizabeth. I'd read many of Philippa Gregory's fictional accounts of Henry VIII, his wives, and his children but none of Alison Weir's non-fiction books. I came across Innocent Traitor first and really liked it, so I picked up The Lady Elizabeth as soon as it came out. I found it very different in that it started with Elizabeth as a small child and ends as she becomes queen. Everything else I have read seems to focus on Elizabeth as queen. It was very interesting and definitely different from my preconceived notion of the life of a princess. I was occasionally distracted by wondering which parts were historical and which were purely fiction. The fact that Alison Weir is a historian made me read the book with a little differently than the Philippa Gregory books. I would definitely recommend it to anyone interested in the time period.

European Royalty book group 5/2008

I've read several of Alison Weir's history books and, although I often disagree with her portrayal of events and people, I have generally found them to be well written and quite enjoyable. I was less impressed with her skill as a novelist after reading The Lady Elizabeth. Weir's fictionalized characters just didn't quite ring true, and even given the difference between today's speech and that of the 16th-century speech, the dialogue didn't feel natural. I found the whole episode of Elizabeth and the Admiral (which takes up a significant chunk of the book) tedious. Weir herself says in her author's note that she doesn't believe the controversial event at the heart of that narrative actually took place. She sees her novel as an opportunity to explore the "what if?" of the situation, but for me this just didn't work, and I find it odd that a historical novelist would choose to include a sequence of events that she admits she herself doesn't buy into.

The book improved in its second half, with the dialogue ringing slightly more true as Elizabeth got older and wiser, but throughout the book, the biggest problem was that Weir has failed to master one of the key tenets of fiction writing: "Show, don't tell." She constantly tells us - or has characters themselves tell us - how they feel and why they are doing things. This made the book a lot less interesting than it could have been, and I almost gave up partway through. I decided to stick it out and did enjoy it more once we got away from the exploration of Elizabeth's adolescent sexual awakening with the Admiral and into Mary Tudor's reign. However, I won't be reading any more of Weir's fiction. Her Elizabeth just wasn't believable enough.

For me, the gold standard of historical novels about Elizabeth remains Susan Kay's Legacy which is simply superb. I can't recommend it highly enough.

Well-enough written. Perhaps I'm just saturated on the Elizabeth story. It was good, but not really memorable.

I had high expectations of Weir's The Lady Elizabeth, as my friend recommended it to me with much enthusiasm. The novel did not disappoint. Unlike Weir's novel about Eleanor of Aquitaine, the narration in The Lady Elizabeth is mature and the dialogue is succinct yet insightful. I was not thrilled about Weir having placed a certain pregnancy in the novel, but I understand that this is her artistic interpretation of events. All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Lady Elizabeth and heartily recommend it to others who regularly read historical fiction.

I thought this was a very well written book. I enjoyed reading it, and was riveted until the very end.

LOVED THIS ONE! After reading a more historical account of Elizabeth's childhood and rise to power, this was a great story combining fact and fiction. I absolutely loved this one and will read the second.