📖 Book Review ~ The Fourth Queen by Nicola Cornick

Boldwood
9 May 2026

Thanks to the publisher for the copy of this book

Now: When Jenna arrives at Winterhill House, she’s instantly transported back… to the priory that stood there before, the life she lived before, and the secret she kept in her past life for the fourth queen of a despotic king.

1539: King Henry VIII is intent on destroying the Catholic church, and with the dissolution of the monasteries, beautiful young prioress Marris is about to lose everything. She knows she has to do whatever it takes to keep her sisters safe, even agreeing to marry the wealthy man who has been gifted the priory land.

But when she marries him, she also finds herself catapulted into the court of the king. And her mastery of the German language makes her an ideal companion for his new queen, Anna of Cleves. It’s destined to be a short marriage… But after the divorce, when Anna finds herself in trouble, it will be Marris she turns to.Will Marris risk her life to help the fourth queen? Because defying the king is the highest treason, and keeping this secret will put everything Marris has fought to keep safe in the gravest danger..

📖 My Review..

I always think of Anna of Cleves as being the most forgotten of Henry VIII’s Queens as she was the first one who escaped with her life intact and thanks to some clever negotiations came away from the beleaguered marriage with her dignity and her coffers largely intact. In this fascinating dual time story the author gives us an altogether different view of Anna of Cleve’s time at the Tudor court and does so by cleverly intertwining both past and present in a totally believable story about Jenna in the present who remembers in vivid detail her time as Anna’s confidente in the Tudor court.

The author has given us a very believable account of being able to recount a past life, and wouldn’t it be fascinating if it were true? I was totally convinced by Jenna’s recollection as her time as Marris North and yet was also totally invested in the modern day story and Jenna’s dilemma of having to rescue something from the past, with all sorts of added complications.

With fine attention to every single detail, the story is richly atmospheric, combining snippets of history with a real sense of time and place. I raced through the book in just a couple of afternoons, eager to learn more and keen to travel back in time with two very believable heroines who together help to make the story such a joy to read.

About the Author

Nicola Cornick is the international bestselling and award-winning historian and author of over 40 novels featuring women from the footnotes of history, and has been translated into 25 languages.

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