Victoria

By: Daisy Goodwin

Genre: Historical Fiction

Rating: 5 Stars

Summary: In 1837, less than a month after her eighteenth birthday, Alexandrina Victoria – sheltered, small in stature, and female – became Queen of Great Britain and Ireland. Many thought it was preposterous: Alexandrina — Drina to her family — had always been tightly controlled by her mother and her household, and was surely too unprepossessing to hold the throne. Yet from the moment William IV died, the young Queen startled everyone: abandoning her hated first name in favor of Victoria; insisting, for the first time in her life, on sleeping in a room apart from her mother; resolute about meeting with her ministers alone.

One of those ministers, Lord Melbourne, became Victoria’s private secretary. Perhaps he might have become more than that, except everyone argued she was destined to marry her cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. But Victoria had met Albert as a child and found him stiff and critical: surely the last man she would want for a husband….

My Thoughts:

"Your subjects are not dolls to be played with...To be a queen, you have to be more than a little girl with a crown."

I love Goodwin. She is one of my top 5 current authors and I always want to read whatever she has written. The American Heiress is one of my absolute favorites. So when I saw she wrote about the beginning of Queen Victoria's reign I was so excited.

She didn't disappoint.

I have read a lot about Victoria - her tempestuous relationship with her mother, her love story with Albert and of course the scandals in the beginning of her reign with the whispers of Lord Melbourne - and Goodwin wove all of the history together brilliantly. I often forget that the greats of history were teenagers at some point - I mean I'm currently 7 years older than Victoria was when she took her crown and while she was more prepared than I will ever be to run a country, Goodwin allowed for her to be an 18 year old and showed her missteps and corrections.

It was beautiful to read. Well written, well researched and simply a joy. I would recommend this for anyone who has any interest at all in Queen Victoria.

I was given a galley copy in exchange for an honest review