Unabridged Chick

Full review here.

A really lovely debut novel, with a heroine I'd have to hate were she not so fabulous. 

Courtier Frances Stuart is so super gorgeous more than one monarch propositions her, but she's known for putting them off (sort of). 

Badly done, Frances would have been a flaky flip-flopper who sleeps around and slut shames, but in Jefferson's hands, our heroine is multidimensional and real.  She wants to have sex with a hot guy and she's anxious about the state of her soul.  She wants to be an inspiration and she wants to be ordinary.  She feels loyalty and jealousy, doubt and confidence, and she manages to be both sexy and restrained in a way that felt real to me.

In an interview with a book blogger, Jefferson said she "became obsessed with the desire to do for the Stuarts what Philippa Gregory had done for the Tudors".  In my opinion, the sexytimes here were far less gratuitous than in the few Gregory novels I've read.  I can't attest to the historical accuracy in this one -- not my era -- but as one who is Tudor'ed out, I wouldn't mind a new dynasty getting some play.