The Dreaded Unhappy Ending

I hate to admit it, but I am only somewhat satisfied with the end of Boleyn Reckoning. I wanted to love it as I loved the first two books in the series. I wanted to hold on to the memories I had of my friends and believe that they, at least, lived happily ever after. Isn't that one of the main reasons for reading fiction such as this: to experience the happy ending that too often alludes us in the real world? I had gotten to know William, Elizabeth, Dominic, and Minuette fairly well throughout Boleyn King and Boleyn Deceit, the first two books of the trilogy by Laura Andersen, and I am sorely disappointed in how their stories ended.

From the beginning of the story there is an element of the love triangle between Dominic, Minuette, and William. It reminded me a great deal of the film Sweet Home Alabama, in which Melanie (Reese Witherspoon) is torn between her very handsome and successful fiancé, Andrew (Patrick Dempsey), and her laid back ex Jake (Josh Lucas). Since both Andrew and Jake are likeable, handsome men who seem to really love her, Melanie is faced with an impossible choice. In the Boleyn King series, Minuette is faced with a similar conundrum. Like Andrew, William is by far the more successful, and frankly the more obvious, choice. William is the king of England, after all. Dominic is the one she loves, however, and ultimately the one she chooses.

As I said in my previous post, I was prepared for it to not end well for everyone involved. Since the story was obviously geared toward a Dominic-Minuette match, I supposed that either William would die or (as I hoped) would end up with someone else altogether. I was even prepared for him to lash out at Dominic and Minuette initially before coming to his senses, but I wasn't prepared for the absolute and unapologetic ruthlessness he exhibited.

I am walking a fine line here, trying to explain my reaction to the end of this series without giving it all away. If William had simply died, I think I could have been okay with it. He had become a monster and wasn't the same Will that I had gotten to know over the last month, so it wouldn't have been as painful as what actually happened. Elizabeth had the most happy ending of the four, but even she was touched with sorrow at the loss of both her brother and the man she loved. Minuette seemingly had a happy ending, as she not only survived, but is reunited with the husband she thought was dead and gave birth to a healthy daughter, Lucette (named so because Minuette felt that she was the light in the midst of darkness). It is only Dominic's story that reveals the truly unhappy ending.

Andersen describes Dominic's horrific execution in detail. She gives an account of William visiting Dominic the night before he is scheduled to be executed. In my mind's eye, I watched as William beat him. I saw Dominic's eyes swell shut, I heard the crack of lost teeth, I felt Dominic's resignation as William unsheathed his sword, and then the shock when, rather than killing Dominic, William smashed his head and all went black. Even more grim was the chronicle of the execution itself: Dominic's face had been beaten beyond recognition and he'd had his tongue cut out and his bowels removed before he finally met his end.

As a side note: I have to give Andersen credit for her way with words, if not for her resolution of the story. My heart raced as I read this passage, and even after I had put the book down and held my daughter before bed, my heart beat a little too quickly. It was only as my daughter and I read one of Barbara Park's Junie B. Jones books that I finally began to relax.

All of this I could have accepted. Dominic's death was cruel, and it was unexpected, but there was a part of me that suspected that all was not what it seemed. After all, the hero is supposed to live to the end of the book, isn't he? My suspicions were confirmed when William visited his mistress and, chained in the basement, was Dominic.

Cruel hope.

I will not divulge the end. I cannot. I get frustrated with a certain friend of mine who reads the end of the book to see if she likes the ending before she commits to reading it. I will only say that what happens to Dominic changes him, and this is what I cannot abide. Minuette gets her husband back, but it is not the same husband. Andersen doesn't say much about him after his rescue, but what she says paints a picture of a bitter, angry man and I can't help but feel sorry for Minuette that she has lost the husband she loved and is now entwined with this stranger. I imagine him sitting in silence, drinking for days. I imagine him lashing out and Minuette doing her best to be patient and excuse his outbursts because of the torture that William and his mistress have unleashed upon him.

 I am angry with Laura Andersen for Minuette's sake. She has lost her friends, William and Elizabeth, for even though Elizabeth survives and becomes queen, Minuette cannot endure being at court any longer. She has lost the husband that she loved so much that she was willing to risk her life, only to have him replaced by an angry shell of the man she loved. Andersen couldn't even allow Lucette  to be a perfect comfort to her mother. It is implied by Elizabeth, and not denied by Minuette, that the baby wasn't Dominic's, but was the result of William's cruelty.

I shall be more careful in choosing my next book. While the fact that I am this bothered by a fictional story is a testament to Andersen's skill, I cannot endure anymore unhappy endings just now. Perhaps I should just stick with Junie B.

I'll keep you posted.

Asking the Question: What if...?

As you may have noticed before, I think of the people I read about as my friends, and I am not alone. In addition to my recreational reading, I am also currently reading a book called The Book Whisperer, by Donalyn Miller for a class I'm taking. Miller even goes so far as to say that the first time she visited New York it was like visiting an old friend she had met in The Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (by E.L. Konigsberg). As Anne Shirley would say, Donalyn is a kindred spirit.

The last book I read was an introduction to a new friend. (See my post here.) This week I am spending time with some friends I've known for a while now. Boleyn Reckoning is the final book in a trilogy by Laura Andersen. I met William, Elizabeth, Dominic, and Minuette about a month ago in Boleyn King, and continued the friendships with Boleyn Deceit. I had to wait for Boleyn Reckoning to be returned to the library, and I'm so excited to finally see how everything is resolved.

The Boleyn Trilogy combines two of my very favorite things: reading and history. I became particularly fond of British history during my English Literature class several years ago. The Tudors have been the topic of interest for centuries, and Laura Andersen has a new approach by offering an alternative history in which Anne Boleyn gives birth to a baby boy named William and is never beheaded. The Catholics and the Protestants are still battling for position, and young King William is trying to keep the French from invading and the Catholics from attempting to overthrow him and install his Catholic half-sister, Mary on the throne. In Boleyn Deceit, William follows in his father's footsteps and pursues a marriage based on love rather than politics with the daughter of his mother's lady-in-waiting, Minuette. Meanwhile, she has developed feelings for William's closest friend, Dominic, and at the end of the book they decide to marry without the king's consent, which could very well put their lives at risk. They determine to tell him, but return to court to find that the king has smallpox. Although he survives, he is scarred both physically and emotionally and Dominic and Minuette decide not to confess for fear of hurting him when he is so vulnerable.

As I write this, Minuette and Dominic have still not come clean about their marriage. Minuette is going through the motions of being the king's intended wife and future queen, while Dominic holds his tongue, even while watching William caress his wife's cheek and kiss her neck. Meanwhile, William is attempting to secure the support of the Spanish by arranging a marriage between King Philip and his sister, Elizabeth (for those of you who are not aware, King Philip of Spain was married to Queen Mary I in real life), and Mary is planning to take advantage of the arrival of the Catholic king of Spain to stage a coup.

Anne Boleyn

In addition to my fondness for British history, I also love the idea that one person can change the very course of history. Without Anne Boleyn's insistence that she not be another mistress, Henry VIII may never have attempted to have his marriage to Catherine of Aragon annulled, which would never have lead to the break of England with Rome and the establishment of the Church of England. While the Catholics and Protestants were at odds long before Henry VIII turned England upside down for Anne, I have often wondered how differently history would judge him and how differently the religious conflict would have gone had he never met Anne.

Wallis Simpson

Another woman that had a major influence on the course of England was a woman by the name of Wallis Simpson. An American divorcee, Simpson managed to do what no woman had done before: capture the heart and the fidelity of King Edward VIII. Faced with the decision to choose either the woman he loved or the throne of England, Edward abdicated and married the forbidden Simpson. As a result, his brother became George VI and his niece is the present Queen Elizabeth II. In addition to affecting the line of succession, England's own path was altered. While Edward and Simpson were anti-Semitic and sympathetic to the cause of Mussolini and the Nazis, under the rule of George VI England joined with the Allied Nations to defeat the Axis Powers. How might our world have been different if Edward had remained on the throne and influenced British policy?

The idea that one person - one woman - could affect the course of history fascinates me. Reading another writer's version of what could have been has been a lot of fun so far. I wish Laura Andersen had spent more time developing the character of Elizabeth. She is a fascinating person to study, and I would love to see more of her in this alternate reality. It has been interesting to watch her interactions with Robert Dudley, but the majority of Boleyn Reckoning so far has been focused on the Dominic-Minuette-William love triangle. I cannot see how this will possibly end well. Perhaps Elizabeth will play a bigger role as the story continues. Either way, I look forward to seeing how it all plays out.

 I'll keep you posted.

Well... Did I Keep Jake?

In my last post I wrote about my new friend, Jake Fisher. Since then I have gotten to know Jake a little better and have seen how his story ends. I have to say that Harlan Coben, the man responsible for introducing me to Jake, weaves an interesting story. There were several times that I thought I had it all figured out, but I turned out to be completely mistaken. As much as I like to be right in real life, I love it when the books I read aren’t predictable.

As I said in my last post, Jake lost the love of his life six years ago when Natalie married another man. The story begins when he sees the obituary of this man and decides to go to the funeral. Instead of finding a grieving Natalie, however, he finds that Todd has left behind a different widow and their two teenaged children. The search begins, and continues, despite several warnings and near brushes with death.

The way Jake describes the Todd Sanderson that he saw marry his beloved Natalie, he had shaggy hair and well-manicured stubble, yet in the pictures he sees of Todd throughout the years he had short hair and is shaven. When Jake looks into Todd’s academic history (Todd happens to be an alumni of the college at which Jake is a professor), he finds that Todd was an exemplary student until he took a personal leave of absence. When he returned he is described as being “distracted,” and “clearly bitter and not the same.” All of this lead me to believe that Todd Sanderson had some sort of evil twin or doppelganger. Strike one.

As Jake begins to look into Natalie’s disappearance, he decides to go back to where they met: an artist’s retreat in Vermont. He re-traces his steps to the retreat itself, which he finds to be a family farm that, according to police, has been there for generations. No artist’s retreat ever existed there. He then goes to the church in which Natalie and Todd were married. There was no record of the wedding in the meticulously kept files, and the minister insists that no one was married on that day. When he returns and tells all of this to his best friend, Benedict, he reminds Jake that he had been going through a difficult time that summer following his father’s death and asks him why he never met Natalie. Obviously, the assumption is that Jake is either completely nuts or is having a nervous breakdown. Strike two.

Ian McKellen as Leigh Teabing

Throughout the book Jake mentions his mentor, Malcom Hume, and he is constantly connected to the mystery that surrounds Natalie. He is revealed to have been instrumental in defending Todd when he was brought before the College Board for expulsion following a violent incident. He was present when Natalie’s father disappeared twenty years ago. Yet, in spite of Jake’s phone calls to Professor Hume, he doesn't actually appear in the book. This makes me wonder if it is a case of Hume being the man behind the disappearances and behind the attacks. It reminds me a little of Leigh Teabing in The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown. Strike Three. I’m out.

As the story progresses, Jake discovers that Todd’s charity, Fresh Start, was not an organization that provides cosmetic surgery to burn victims and children born with cleft palates as it is made out to be. Instead, it is a secret organization that is like Witness Protection on steroids. The people involved carry cyanide pills. They mean business. The mob is involved, and everything from Natalie’s father to Benedict is tied in to Fresh Start.

Hugh Jackman

I won’t reveal the end, but I will say that I was satisfied with the ending and that Jake will remain a friend of mine. I have read that there is talk of making a movie based on Six Years, and Hugh Jackman is rumored to be attached to star as Jake. I can understand why. It has the action that men seem to like in a film, and the romance that women enjoy, all surrounded by a really great mystery. My one complaint about Six Years is that I never really got a chance to get to know Natalie. Jake is great, don’t get me wrong. He is relatable and reminds me a lot of myself, but I would have really liked to have been able to know the woman he loves. She seems to be a really interesting character that deserves to have her voice heard. I can’t help but wonder what she was up to for the six years that she and Jake were apart. I guess I’ll leave that to my own imagination.

I'll keep you posted.

Meet My New Friend, Jake

If the title of my blog and the little blurb about me didn't give it away, I will come right out and tell you that I love to read. I love to solve a murder mystery without fear of being hunted by the killer, I love reading about Tudor England without having to empty a chamber pot, and I love to read about characters who don't exist in our world such as romantic vampires or teenaged wizards. Reading takes me to places and to times which I will never have the opportunity to go and allows me to imagine doing things I could never really do.

 Sometimes I finish a book and I can't get to the library quickly enough. Maybe it's too late and the library is closed, or maybe I've got too many other things to do and I don't have time to go out. And although I'm ashamed to admit it, sometimes I have a bit of a fine and I've got to wait a few days before I can pay it. Does that ever happen to you? No? I'm the only one? Hmm...

When this happens, I get desperate and I look through the books that seem to come out of nowhere. Maybe they belong to my husband, who likes to read different books than I do. (His type of book is more likely to be turned in to a Hollywood film starring Bruce Willis or an over-confident Tom Cruise.) Perhaps it is a book that my father-in-law left behind when he visited last summer. It might be a book my mother lent me that I forgot about because of the stack of library books and text books I’ve got sitting on my side table. Often times, I pick up one of these books and begin to read, simply because I have a void to fill. Occasionally, the book surprises me and it becomes a favorite.

Monday I picked up a book that has the potential to become one of these surprises. I had been searching for a book to read, dismissing the many books on the shelves that I had already read. As much as I might love Anne Shirley and Magdalena Yoder, I needed to make a new friend. Finally, I picked up a book called SixYears, by Harlan Coben. The summary on the back cover tells about Jake Fisher, who still feels the loss of Natalie, the love of his life, who married another man six years ago. Upon reading of her husband’s death, he decides to go to the funeral and discovers that the widow isn’t Natalie at all. It then goes on to suggest that his search for the woman he loves puts his life in danger. I didn’t know if Jake and I would become friends, but he certainly sounded like someone I’d like to meet.


I’ve spent the last three days getting to know Jake. His intelligence is unquestionable; his position as a Political Science professor is evidence of this. His interactions with students suggest that he is understanding, self-aware, and analytical. His friendship and position as wingman to a fellow professor suggests that he has had the life of the average man. He confesses, however, that his relationships with women never last three months, and postulates that it is because his relationship with Natalie only lasted three months.

I relate to Jake. Like him, I am academic. I am self-aware, analyzing my thoughts and behaviors, not only recognizing my faults but also the motivations behind these thoughts and behaviors. I am also like Jake in that I am curious and want answers, I still feel unsure about the loss of my dad because I didn’t get closure, and I have felt the pain of betrayal and heartbreak.

As I write this, Jake has found more questions than answers. I don’t know yet how it ends, and frankly, that is going to be the deciding factor when I determine whether or not I like this book and whether or not Jake Fisher joins my inner circle.

I'll keep you posted.