Touted as the next Jean Plaidy, this author doesn't even come close! Pedantic, with dumb downed prose, she makes history look like a day in the 21st century. Historical details completely lacking, Susan Higginbotham uses this to create a story based in her imagination, which is absolutely uninspired. Blah doesn't begin to describe the actual storyline, it goes more like this - blah, blah, blah. Using historical figures in a way that is highly unhistorical, I didn't find any pleasure in reading at all. This historical fictionalization of the short 14th century marriage of Hugh Despencer and Elizabeth Montague is a racier version of the royal series of Norah Lofts and Jean Plaidy I used to read of yore. Higginbotham tries to render medieval actions explicable to modern readers, while staying faithful to real events in the lives of her characters, which really puts a crimp on satisfying personal arcs--just when they're getting their lives together, the plague arrives.
Do You like book Hugh And Bess: A Love Story (2009)?
Very enjoyable as a love story, and as a study in the England of the 1300's
—divvv
A nice continuation to the Traitor's Wife. Hugh and Bess story was sweet.
—Jessie
Barely 3 stars. Entertaining, I guess, but pretty mediocre writing.
—Supergirl
