It’s more believable with Elizabeth, since Kat spends a lot of time with her as a child in the story, but with Anne she’s just a lady in waiting, and whilst she’s trusted with a couple of secrets Anne doesn’t seem to be particularly close to her. Look, to believe that a character has a fierce devotion to another character, I need to be shown why this is, and how it grows, maybe show some scenes of the characters being close or some insight into Kat’s thoughts. Kat gets shipped off first to Anne Boleyn and then Elizabeth and develops a fierce devotion to them both, for reasons which are never shown. Unfortunately, Harper’s Cromwell is not Mantel’s Cromwell, and that entire plot line is killed in its tracks when Cromwell is. Through her interactions with Cromwell, an intriguing hidden world of secret agents and spies is hinted at, as is the sharp mind of Cromwell himself, and I definitely wanted to know more. Harper creates an interesting background for Kat Ashley, and I was interested to see how she would get from these fictional beginnings to the position history tells us she later held. Please visit her website at I was quite intrigued by The Queen’s Governess initially. Her most recent books include THE SOUTH SHORES TRILOGY (CHASING SHADOWS, DROWNING TIDES and FALLING DARKNESS.) Her latest historical is THE ROYAL NANNY. Karen has given numerous talks to readers and writers across the county. Karen's books have been published in many foreign languages and she won the Mary Higgins Clark Award for 2005. Besides her American settings, Karen loves the British Isles, where her Scottish and English roots run deep, and where she has set many of her historical Tudor-era mysteries and her historical novels about real and dynamic British women. A lifelong Ohioan, Karen and her husband Don divide their time between the midwest and the southeast, both locations she has used in her books.

A New York Times and USA Today bestselling author, Karen Harper is a former college English instructor (The Ohio State University) and high school literature and writing teacher.

The Queen's Secret by Karen Harper