THE WHITE PRINCESS (COUSINS WAR #5).

Book five and the penultimate book read for this years What's In A Name? challenge: 'Book with a colour in the title' category.

THE WHITE PRINCESS by PHILIPPA GREGORY.

SOURCE: A Christmas present.

INNER FRONT COVER BLURB: Somewhere beyond the shores of England, a Pretender is mustering an army. He claims to be brother to the queen, and the true heir to the throne. But is he the lost boy sent into the unknown by his mother, the White Queen? Or a counterfeit prince - a low-born enemy to Henry Tudor and his York princess wife.

When Henry Tudor picked up the crown of England from the mud of Bosworth Field he knew he would have to marry the princess of the rival house - Elizabeth of York - in an effort to unify a country divided by war for nearly two decades.

But his bride was still in love with his enemy - and her mother and half of England still dreamed of a missing heir and a triumphant return for the House of York.

The new Queen Elizabeth has to decide if she can stand by a king whose support and courage are crumbling before her eyes. She has to choose between Tudor and York, between her new husband and the boy who claims to be her beloved lost brother: the rose of York come home at last.

FIRST SENTENCE {Sheriff Hutton Castle, Yorkshire, Autumn 1485}: I wish I could stop dreaming.

MEMORABLE MOMENT {Page 123}: As they come down the curve of the stair I see first the booted feet of the leading man, then his deep scarlet leggings and then his bright scarlet tunic trimmed and quartered with gold lace: the uniform of the yeomen of the guard, Henry's newly created personal troop. Behind him comes another, and another; they have sent a corps of ten men to collect a pale and shaking little boy of eleven.0

MY THOUGHTS: An odd series in so much as to read it in the order of publication* is to read it in a different order to the chronological order. I personally felt that to read the story in chronological order would be easiest to follow.

The latest instalment in the Cousins War saga, The White Princess as told from the perspective of Elizabeth of York (daughter of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville aka The White Queen) follows on from where The Kingmaker's Daughter left off.

As I've come to expect from Philippa Gregory a generally well researched novel though as she admits in her author notes the book is a 'fiction about a mystery - so two steps from any historically recorded fact'.

Given that two of the main female characters - Elizabeth Woodville and Margaret Beaufort (aka The Red Queen) - have featured before (the former in 2009, the latter in 2010) whilst it was good to see them further fleshed out I feel as if a re-read of their stories might have proved beneficial.

Still, an enjoyable enough read but perhaps not quite as strong a story as the previous books in the series. A tad too long - at times it really felt as if two dozen words where used when a dozen would have sufficed - with a tendency to be repetitive. I feel as if the author went over the top in striving to get across certain aspects of the story - aspects generally involving Henry, his anxieties, his suspicions, his seemingly all consuming paranoia.

An author readers seem to love or hate/can take or leave. What can I say? A long-standing fan of her work I'm eagerly anticipating reading The King's Curse (my choice for the 'Book with an ING in the title' category of What's In A Name? 2015) and what I'm led to believe will be the seventh book in the series (The Last Rose).

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* Publication order (Chronological order in brackets)
#1 The White Queen (#3)
#2 The Red Queen (#2)
#3 The Lady Of The Rivers (#1)
#4 The Kingmaker's Daughter (#4)
#5 The White Princess (#5)
#6 The King's Curse (#6)