ebookreview | Entries tagged with author: flora harding

The People’s Princess by Flora Harding

Sypnosis
Buckingham Palace, 1981

Her engagement to Prince Charles is a dream come true for Lady Diana Spencer but marrying the heir to the throne is not all that it seems. Alone and bored in the palace, she resents the stuffy courtiers who are intent on instructing her about her new role as Princess of Wales…

But when she discovers a diary written in the 1800s by Princess Charlotte of Wales, a young woman born into a gilded cage so like herself, Diana is drawn into the story of Charlotte’s reckless love affairs and fraught relationship with her father, the Prince Regent.

As she reads the diary, Diana can see many parallels with her own life and future as Princess of Wales.

The story allows a behind-the-scenes glimpse of life in the palace, the tensions in Diana’s relationship with the royal family during the engagement, and the wedding itself.

Review:
Two Princesses of Wales. Dual Timelines. Neither to ever be Queen of England.

I caught sight of this book while browsing the late Princess Diana's biographies. The premise sounded interesting. Two different Princesses of Wales and two different timelines offer eerily similar lives.

I went into this book with high expectations and came out of it disappointed. As much as I love anything Diana, this book should have been clearly about Charlotte. There is more about her than Diana. This book brought nothing to the table about Diana that had not been written in the past - her bulimia, her hatred of Camilla, and the fact she was insecure in her relationship with Charles. All this had been public knowledge especially when it came to Diana's own book in the late 80s/early 90s.

I am also wondering about the journal. I used to write in one but I never wrote in it like the supposed novel filled to look like a book within a journal. I doubt even the rest of the royals had anything like this. If any of the royals kept personal diaries, they would not be this detailed as a bookish-like journal.

I won't give this book an actual rating. I don't believe DNFs should be given any sort of rating. Maybe I will come back to this book in the future.

Genre:
Historical Fiction, British Royal Family, History, Dual Timelines, British Literature, DNFed

Stars:

DNF @ 40%