The Other Boleyn Girl and The Comfort of Lies - Review

So this is kind of late, but I did end up reading The Other Boleyn Girl and The Comfort of Lies for book club. SO here are my belated impressions of the books, lets start with The Other Boleyn Girl.

I really liked this book. A brief summary - King Henry VIII married an older women(Katherine), she was unable to produce a(live) male heir to the throne. This resulted in the King sleeping around a lot, which I found funny because he ended up as the head of the Church of England. Basically this book follows the Boleyn family and how the men in the family scheme for the favor of the King and his gifts of titles, land and wealth through "Whoring out" of the 2 Boleyn girls, Mary and Anne. The book is written from Mary's point of view. Pretty interesting to put yourself into that time period and think about the role of women, religion, marriage, politics and all the power struggles. I also was strangely curious about the food of the time period. Lots of boiled eggs, cheese and bread for breakfast apparently...

I really liked the Other Boleyn Girl, and I am now wanting to read just about every other book the author has written on the time period. Unfortunately, due to book club's monthly reading assignments, I'm not sure when I will have the time, since I'm having a hard time finishing one book a month. Well actually I flew through this book, which is impressive since its 500+ pages! I suppose I found it exciting because I know some of the history on King Henry VIII, and the anticipation was killing me! I've added the Constant Princess to my to-read list. Its about King Henry VIII's first wife, Princess Katherine of Spain. Sounds like she had a pretty interesting life from what I gathered in The Other Boleyn Girl.

All-righty, now for The Comfort of Lies -

Not a huge fan, perhaps if was meant to be a very uncomfortable book, not really sure. This book took me longer to read than the previous, though it was significantly shorter. Basically its about Tia, a young women who has an affair with a married man, Nathan, and gets pregnant. She decides to give the child up for adoption to a very successful couple, Carolyn and Peter, who would be able to provide a great life for her child. The story then follows Nathan's wife, Juliette, as she finds out about the affair and then later about the child, and how terrible this whole experience is for everyone... The story is mostly written from the women's perspectives, with a couple of the chapters coming from Nathan. It was kind of interesting to get the view from each perspective on the topic. I do feel this book played up stereotypes a bit though - all of the characters are what you first thought they were going to be like, no surprises. Definitely wouldn't have picked this book for myself, but now I can say I've read it. The next book is way more enticing, The Fault in our Stars by John Green, which promises to be a tear-jerker since its a love story involving childhood terminal cancer...

Bring it on!! I've been meaning to try out my Anti-Crying Technique - apparently if you press up on the cartilage at the bottom of your nose(see below) it prevents tears from coming out of your eye ducts. Just in case, probably don't want to read/test at work, who knows what rumors would start...

P.S. - The library thing worked great for the first 2 books, but apparently a movie is coming out on The Fault in Our Stars, so now everyone and their mom is on the waiting list. Its a bit ridiculous - the library district has about 20 books and a wait list 200 people long! Ended up buying the book, along with the next one(The Book Thief) so I wouldn't have to worry about getting it in time. I am hoping to host the July meeting and I've picked The Mermaid Chair since its been sitting on my shelf for a while.