I saw this book when browsing through some library shelves and snatched it up immediately. I had already put it on my 'to-read' shelf, but hadn't made a concentrated effort to get my hands on it, so spotting it then seemed like the best time to go ahead and take it.

de Lisle is thorough in her research about the Grey sisters, and I learned quite a bit about them. She tears through the myths and reinterpretations that have sprung up about Jane Grey in the centuries since her execution, and shows us that, far from being shy, retiring, and unambitious, Jane was as fierce and ambitious as any of her Tudor and Stuart cousins. She sheds light on Katherine and Mary Grey, the two sisters who are often forgotten in comparison to the other Tudor women, like Elizabeth or Mary Queen of Scots, and the hefty prices they paid for being considered Elizabeeth's Protestant heirs.

The writing was dry in some places and I didn't much care for the sprinkled instances where de Lisle falls into a kind of 'story-telling', but other than that, I enjoyed this book that reminds us that there were other famous women of that time beyond the two Tudor Queens and their cousin the Scottish Queen.