Blood of the Red Rose by P J Gray plus giveaway

I have received a free e-copy of the book Blood of the Red Rose by P J Gray to review. This is Philippa’s debut novel.

Here is the book blurb.

Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, finds himself exiled in France when Warwick the Kingmaker puts Edward IV on the throne of England. Desperate to return the throne to the rightful King Henry VI, Beaufort finds himself caught between Henry’s bitter wife Marguerite of Anjou and the French ‘Spider’ King Louis until Edward and Warwick fall out in spectacular style and, at Louis’ urging, Warwick becomes their unlikely ally. Set on the rich stage of the Wars of the Roses, this is a tale of intrigue, love and war that can only end in tragedy.

I was really looking forward to reading this book, as I am a huge fan of Philippa Gregory stories which are set at a similar time during the War of the Roses.

It was useful to have a list of characters and dates at the beginning of the book, but I still found it confusing to work out who was on which side, particularly with changes of allegiance. It was also a hard story to get into initially, but I did later find myself focussing on Kate and skimming through chapters that she didn’t feature in. Kate was the illegitimate daughter of Richard Neville, the Earl of Warwick and we see an affectionate bond between the two of them. She seems to have achieved a closer relationship with her father than either of her half-sisters. However he still marries her off to Stephen Thevenot. Their marriage does not fare well and Stephen mistreats her. Luckily for Kate, she is soon widowed. After this she blossoms. You’ll have to read the book to find out who her next relationship is with.

This book is available on Amazon currently priced at £10.99 in paperback and is also available in Kindle format. An interesting historical read.

About the author

Philippa was born in Chichester and developed a passion for history whilst growing up in Cyprus and then North Yorkshire. She began writing when she was at junior school, winning the school prize for English, and wrote and illustrated her own stories which she read to her long-suffering friends. She started her first novel, Blood of the Red Rose, when her elder daughter was a baby and finally completed it twenty-eight years later. Philippa has two daughters, four grandchildren and a grand-cat and now lives in Cyprus with Paul, her husband of twenty-five years, three dogs and four cats.

Plus I’m hosting a rafflecopter competition to giveaway a paperback copy of this book to one lucky winner. Open to UK and US residents.

a Rafflecopter giveaway – Please click on the link to enter.

And you may see my other giveaways here.

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I’m participating in the book tour and you may like to check out some of the other blog stops on the tour.

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Disclosure.  This post is a review of an e-book I was sent for free.  All opinions are my own.