Sadly dreary

I was very interested by the description, but sadly the book doesn't live up to it. Caroline of Ansbach may have been overlooked by history, but this book there's nothing to persuade me that history was wrong to do so. I listened to the first two-thirds, but so much of it was simply quoting perfectly ordinary correspondence - for instance conveying welcome or congratulations on her accession - or contemporary literature which flattered her in the usual way. Though we are often told of her Incisive mind or earthy wit, virtually no examples are given of either. I persevered as long as I could, but found the narrative and added the narrator very dull indeed.

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enjoyable

This was a great book, narrator was easy to listen to. But there was much information in this book neglected about Carolina's life. I feel the book spent a lot of time on her early pre-married life, and did not provide a great deal of information on why she was such an "iron lady" or the actions that made her so formidable. I feel the book rush through her later life when she was queen and did not nearly enough go into detail on her relationship with Frederick. the book is great however if you would like a full overview of the hanovarian dynasty I would recommend "the strangest family" which I feel is a great sequel to this.

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1 person found this helpful

Interesting subject but poor narration

I was very much looking forward to listening to this book and, whilst I enjoyed learning more about Queen Caroline, this was limited by the narrator's poor reading. I find it difficult to understand how Godfrey Kneller's name could have been pronounced as K-neller rather than Kn-eller (with a silent K as in knee) but also how it passed any editing. Surely someone has to listen to this to make sure it is not gobbledygook? Didn't the author express any concerns about the narration?

Likewise when the narrator was reading an original article quoted in the text, that was written in a way that can appear odd or missspelt to us and therefore has the word (sic) added after it (meaning that the word is quoted exactly as it stands in the original), she also included that word in her reading, which is very off putting. It is very odd to suddenly hear the word 'sick' at the end of a sentence when it has absolutely no relevance to what has been spoken before. As we cannot see the misspelt word she did not need to include that abbreviation but because she obviously didn't understand what she was reading she included it to the detriment of her narration and my enjoyment of the book. I will look for more books by the same author but will avoid this narrator.

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2 people found this helpful