My Enemy the Queen

by Victoria Holt

Another to add to my growing collection of Jean Plaidy novels!  Some of the books written under the pseudonym Holt are historical novels, unlike the majority, which are mystery novels.   Unfortunately the copy I have is the 1978 paperback and it features an illustrated cover that looks like it belongs on a romance novel.  But, if you’ve ever read one of this author’s books, you’d know that there is not much romance in her writing, or at least not the kind of romance that belongs in the romance section of the bookstore.  Read on for the description.

“Is Queen Elizabeth I too wily or too afraid to marry? Or is there a spoiler — Lettice Devereaux — in the royal romances? The marriage between this beautiful and tempestuous widow and Elizabeth’s longtime favorite, the Earl of Leicester, can’t have endeared Lettice to the queen.

Some years later, on Leicester’s death, another courtier wins the queen’s heart — only to break it by secretly marrying someone else and then by plotting against the Crown. This soldier-poet, the Earl of Essex, is the son of Lettice and her first husband, Walter Devereaux.”