Young Adult Fiction
Candlewick Press
May 8, 2018
EBook ARC
384

By turns thrilling, dramatic, and touching, this is the story of Queen Victoria's childhood as you've never heard it before. Miss V. Conroy is good at keeping secrets. She likes to sit as quiet as a mouse, neat and discreet. But when her father sends her to Kensington Palace to become the companion to Princess Victoria, Miss V soon finds that she can no longer remain in the shadows. Her father is Sir John Conroy, confidant and financial advisor to Victoria's mother, and he has devised a strict set of rules for the young princess that he calls the Kensington System. It governs Princess Victoria's behavior and keeps her locked away from the world. Sir John says it's for the princess's safety, but Victoria herself is convinced that it's to keep her lonely and unhappy. Torn between loyalty to her father and her growing friendship with the willful and passionate princess, Miss V has a decision to make: continue in silence or speak out. In an engaging, immersive tale, Lucy Worsley spins one of England's best-known periods into a fresh and surprising story that will delight both young readers of historical fiction and fans of the television show featuring Victoria.
Thank you to NetGallery for providing me an advanced reader copy in exchange for my honest review.
Two girls named Victoria. One is the princess and is held under the thumb of Sir John Conroy, and the other is the companion of the princess placed there by her father to keep an eye on the princess. With the strict living arrangement, the girls find comfort in each other even though they are not completely satisfied with their lives.
I first want to state that this book comes out (again?) on 05/08 and if you like historical fiction books, this book will probably be right up your alley! I like some historical fiction, like The Infernal Devices, The Dark Days Club, and some others but I am not someone who goes out looking for historical fiction. I say that because I want you to go into my review knowing that I am not a big H-Fiction fan and this was written by someone who just thinks they are okay and not the best thing to happen to man-kind.
So, anyway, this book was dragging for me. I am not sure if it was because there wasn’t a lot of action and that the plot was lacking some for me, but for some reason I found myself enjoying it enough to keep going, but had to force myself to pick it up each time instead of reading one of my other books. I take complete blame for that though. I went into this book knowing it wasn’t going to have huge fight scenes and such, but for some reason I was still waiting for them.
The characters weren’t very three-dimensional, but felt as if they had a lot of potential to be so. I found myself caring for the girls and hoping things would turn around for them, but it was more of how an acquaintance feels for someone, and not how a friend would feel, if that makes sense to anyone but me.
I believe this is based off of real-historical events and settings. I’m not a huge history-buff, so I know very little about Queen/Princess Victoria and what all happened during her life. This was very enlightening on what could have happened though. The author, of course, has creative liberties and might have changed a few things, but I believe she tried to stick to the main story as much as she could.
To conclude, I think if I was a bigger fan of historical fiction, I would have enjoyed it more. So I will give this an even three star rating to show how on the fence I am about it.