I think this was a really refreshing take on the time period, going at it from an interesting angle.

What a weird and awful book.
The plot was confusing. The writing was both confusing and unusual.
A very disappointing book

An unusual view of the palaces of Queen Mary from the laundry. Alys is an interesting character - unseen but a pivotal role in the household of the exiled princess. Hearing and seeing more than she should, Alys becomes more involved in Tudor history. I liked seeing how Alys developed as a character- learning to adapt and look after herself as the household was moved according to the Queen’s wishes but felt the ending was rather abrupt.

Oh how I love a story set in Tudor times. One of my favourite eras of history, The Testimony of Alys Twist follows Alys as she goes about her job as a laundress in the palace. She is privy to conversations that most are not and it just so happens the iconic Queen Mary and Princess Elizabeth are the women she hears talking.

I really enjoyed the premise and the character of Alys, she was engaging and plucky - overall an immersive slice of historical fiction.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Review - The Testimony of Alys Twist by Suzannah Dunn
This review has been made possible thanks to @NetGalley and Little Brown Book Group for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book follows the story of Alys, a laundress for Queen Elizabeth, through her friendship with the tailor’s assistant, Bel, through their work within the household. Alys has a secret, a long-forgotten husband, the story of how she moved from place to place to evade him and their past, and it’s this uncanny ability that lands her a spot in doing the laundry for the Queen’s half-sister, the Lady Elizabeth, as she is confined and sent away from the palace. 🏰

The story is character-driven, with an interesting way of conveying her thoughts as conversation, so you’re never fully certain of how much she says aloud and what is just her internal monologue. The writing flows well and Dunn is very descriptive about the environment. I really enjoyed reading this novel, as Elizabethan England isn’t a topic I’ve read much about but it was interesting nonetheless. I recommend it to readers of historical fiction and anyone who enjoys some subtle mentions of female relationships. 👩‍❤️‍👩

Have you read this yet? Or do you have a favourite book from a similar time? Let me know below 👑

Orphan Alys has managed to survive against the odds. She works as a launderess and has secured a position in the household of the new Queen. Mary Tudor in 37 and has waited to claim the throne for many years, now she has done so and is also about to get married to a Spanish prince. This is causing some upset among the people of England and there are plots to dethrone Mary centred around her half-sister Elizabeth. Alys is pressured into becoming a spy in Elizabeth's household.
This is an interesting take on Tudor history and from the viewpoint of a quite humble servant which is to its benefit. I found the 'lesbian' love affair unconvincing and didn't really see what plot there was. However as a view of Tudor England from a lowly perspective it was interesting

Even if it's well written nothing seems to happen in this story and it didn't keep my attention falling flat.
I liked the well researched historical background but it wasn't enough to keep me interested.
Not my cup of tea.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Orphan Alys Twist has done well for herself and accepts a position as laundress at the Royal Wardrobe of the new queen Mary Tudor. At court she meets Bel, the tailor's daughter, and the two girls start an intimate friendship. When the new queen wants a Spanish marriage and a return to the old Catholic ways, rebellion is coming to London and some people speak out in favor of her half-sister, the lady Elizabeth. Alys is sent as a spy to Elizabeth's household to report back on her.

I previously read two novels of Suzannah Dunn, the first being the queen of subtleties about Anne Boleyn which I disliked and the second was 'The May bride' about a young Jane Seymour that I enjoyed enough to give Dunn another try.

In 'the testimony of Alys Twist' we again travel to Tudor England where the new queen Mary Tudor has just been crowned after the short reign of her cousin Lady Jane Grey. Mary is much beloved by the public and everyone is hoping that this will be the start of a new chapter for England. We meet young laundress Alys who carries a past with her and tries to find her place at the Royal Wardrobe. She befriends Bel and the two of them start to hang around together.

But when the new queen is looking to Spain for a marriage and wants to reinstall the Catholic faith, tensions start to rise with the protestant fractions resulting in the Wyatt Rebellion. Mary's half-sister and heir to the throne Elizabeth is named as a conspirator. Alys gets charged with going to Ashridge to spy on the princess. As a laundress nobody is taking any notice of her and she can report back on what is said and done within the household.

I loved to read about Mary's reign, as she is mostly overlooked in favor of her sister Elizabeth. From the Wyatt rebellion, the dramatic marriage with Philip of Spain to the burnings, you can feel how her people are having a hard time to accept that the new queen wants to turn back time.

Alys is a bit of a strange main character. As a laundress she can easily move within a royal household but she isn't a real part of it. She's still far from the action. Therefore, there's a strong focus on her own story and for me Alys' story was a bit of mess. She has a past she wants to keep secret at any cost, she falls in love with the wrong person and she doesn't know where her loyalties lie—with the queen or the princess?

Also the whole spying on the princess thing turns out a bit different from what I thought it would be. I had hoped to get more of an insight into Elizabeth's character and how she copes with her arrest and consequent house arrest at Woodstock. But Alys only comes occasionally into her room to pick up the dirty laundry.

All this results in a sudden ending of the story and too many loose ends. Dunn also uses very modern language, something that already bothered me in her previous works, but it doesn't really feel like an issue here. I think I'm simply disappointed in the story itself. If you want to read something from Suzannah Dunn, I heartily recommend 'The May Bride', as it is still the better novel I've read from her.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher to provide me a copy of this book in return for my honest opinion.

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This review will be published on my book blog https://inanotherera.wordpress.com/ and Goodreads profile on the 15th of October.

One of the Queen’s of historical fiction returns with another original Tudor-based story seen through the eyes of a commoner. Set in 16th century England, we follow Alys Twist, an orphan and laundress at Whitehall, employed in Queen Mary’s court who becomes embroiled in a spat between sisters Mary and Princess Elizabeth. Mary feels threatened by Elizabeth’s popularity amongst regular citizens. Queen Mary made the mistake of attempting to turn the country back to Catholicism leading to uprisings calling for her sister to be placed on the throne instead of her. Alys is sent to spy on Elizabeth in another post as a laundress so she can report back to spymasters as to anything important she's overheard. Alys’ job allows her close access to Elizabeth without her even realising it.

This is an interesting story with much intrigue. It's rare to find an established novelist who includes Sapphic themes within their work but that is exactly what the author has done here. It's very much a character-driven tale with Alys front and centre; I liked her character as she was hardly whiter than white and it made for captivating reading. The amount of research carried out to make this as accurate as possible was astonishing and I found myself immersed in the story completely. If you enjoy Tudor fiction with an engaging central character, social commentary on the religious and political upheaval which was happening in England at the time, and plenty of intrigue then this is well worth your time. Many thanks to Little, Brown for an ARC.

This was slightly different from a lot of books I’ve read about the Tudor period because it comes through the eyes of a commoner. Alys Twist is a laundress in the household of Queen Mary and becomes used as a pawn by the two sisters. It is a time of plotting because the Catholic Mary is going to be married and it could cause difficulties if she marries a Catholic prince, both from courtiers and commoners alike. The country has lived under the Church of England since her father Henry broke with Rome, Mary’s heir the Princess Elizabeth is also Protestant and Mary would like to know what’s going on her household and what better spy than a lowly laundress like Alys.
Alys had been happy working in the Queen’s wardrobe and had formed a relationship with the Queen’s tailor’s daughter, Bel. However this is now in danger of being separated as Alys has to become Mary’s spy. I liked that Alys did have some back story and secrets of her own including a husband she has left behind to come to London. Elizabeth is a tantalising character, especially as we’re only seeing and hearing about her third hand. There is some interest though in hearing servants speak about their masters, rather than hearing opinion from the nobility. I liked the detail of the clothes and the work Alys does. I also enjoyed the unexpected experience she has of riding in the royal barge with the Princess. The Tudor background and setting are well researched and give the book a good underpinning. As in Phillipa Gregory’s The Queens Fool it’s good to have a different perspective on events we know so well.

Alys Twist is a laundress at Whitehall palace, serving Mary Tudor as she comes to the throne. Mary’s attempts to turn the country back to Catholicism lead to uprisings, most of which plot to put her sister Elizabeth on the throne. A laundress is someone who is seen but not really remembered as having been there, so she is pressed into service as the Queen’s spy in the Princesses household. Essentially, The Testimony of Alys Twist is The Queen’s Fool by Philippa Gregory, but without much of a plot or a sympathetic main character.

Not much happens in this book, and I kept reading really to try and find out if it was going anywhere. No such luck.

I also found it very difficult to care about Alys - what happens to her, and her romance, anything really. To be honest she came across as a bit of naïve idiot, and not in an endearing way. I know the point was to make her ordinary, to tell these turbulent times among royals from the perspective of the common folk their actions impact the lives of, but I think here Alys has been made too ordinary for the reader to invest. I also found the language used among the characters in the book jarring. Again, I know it was an attempt to mark them out as the common folk, but it just did not fit and there were certain words that had me rolling my eyes and Googling if they were common Tudor parlance.

All that being said, things do start to warm up half way through and what happens becomes (a little) less predictable. However, the book just judders to a halt at the end, with the only real and sympathetic storyline of an acquaintance of Alys’ being taken in by Catholic priests on a matter of faith and being imprisoned getting squashed into the last half an hour or so without really being built up to anywhere else in the book.

While I can’t say I massively enjoyed this book, I’d you’re a fan of Philippa Gregory and Alison Weir, I can vouch for the fact that Suzannah Dunn’s books about Tudor queens are rather enjoyable!

The Testimony of Alys Twist is published next Thursday (October 24th).

The story of this book wasn’t really what I was expecting, as it didn’t reflect the synopsis for me, which suggests the books will be full of deception and spying and intrigue, but that isn’t really the case.

Alys is a laundress at Whitehall, who is sent to be a spy at the home of Princess Elizabeth, and although this has the makings of a really interesting plot I found it quite underwhelming. She is out of her depth, she doesn’t pass any information of note on and she mostly doesn’t get close enough to Mary or Elizabeth to find anything of interest to tell to the spymasters. Alys’s spying didn’t create any dangerous tension to the story, which novels of this theme usually have.

A lot of this came from Alys being a very reactionary character. She isn’t shown to make any significant decisions, and when she does it’s mostly to just stay where she is. She keeps saying she will tell someone a piece of information and then doesn’t, or tell the people she meets who she is and then doesn’t. Alys’ actions didn’t move the plot at all, they were always just reacting to what was happening, which isn’t the sign of a good protagonist.

She also doesn’t seem to have any strong opinions on either Mary or Elizabeth, or the political and religious tensions of the era, and whilst this may reflect the opinions of the ordinary people in the 16th Century, it doesn’t make a particularly compelling character, nor does it help explain the decisions Alys does make. It also doesn’t help that the queen and princess are mostly absent in this story, so Alys and the readers aren’t really engaged in their characters.

The most interesting part of this book was the relationship between Alys and Bel, the tailor’s daughter and apprentice. It happens a little suddenly, but it fits the characters and creates a nice domestic set up, which is in danger by the job Alys is given. I would have liked more from their relationship. I did like Bel’s character and would have liked more of her, and more of the story regarding their relationship in a time when it wasn’t accepted and when a woman was supposed to marry and have children, a theme only lightly touched on in this book.

Although the book is obviously well researched, regarding the clothing and cleaning practises of the day and the era is one of my favourite historical periods, it just didn’t hold my attention. Though it was easy to read, I found that the plot wasn’t very strong, the characters weren’t interesting enough, and it ends at the most interesting point in the story.

Thank you to NetGalley and Little Brown Book for this ARC to read and honestly review.

Alys is a laundress, this means that she has access to some very interesting places and people.
This is not that great when you live in Queen Mary's Catholic London and the world is full of plot and intrigue around the Queen's marriage and the actions of her younger sister Elizabeth.
Who is in the best position to find out - a laundress.

This plot was amazing, however, it does not get 4 stars because there was a bit of a gap between the action and the how Alys ended up where she was.
It also ended very suddenly so I hope we get to find out more

Overall great idea and plot, with interesting characters and understanding of the political and religious history of the time. Just needed more fine tuning for me.

If you asked me just what happened in this book, I would have zero chance of telling you. I’m, firstly, not entirely sure I absorbed any of the plot. But secondly, I’m not entirely sure there was one. Or at least, not one I could follow.

Broadly speaking, the story follows Alys, a laundress in Queen Mary’s service, who is sent to spy on the Princess Elizabeth, but later comes to be on her side? I guess? This is kind of where I got lost in terms of plot. I’m not entirely sure when or why Alys decided she would side with Elizabeth. I’m not entirely sure what her role even was in the second half. In all honesty, this feels less like a whole book in itself and more like half of a book.

I think part of that is that I was never clear on what drove Alys to most of her actions. The spying on Elizabeth is clearly not her choice, but then. Why did she change her mind? What drove her to make the decisions she did in the second half of the book? Because I couldn’t answer questions regarding her motivations, I didn’t really care about what was happening in the plot or to her.

Not that, I’d argue, much did happen in the plot. Like I mentioned earlier, the book felt more like half a book than a whole one. When it ended, I flipped through a few more pages, half expecting more to it. But there wasn’t more to it. It didn’t even feel open-ended in the kind of satisfying way, it felt like there wasn’t an end. Like it had been stopped mid-arc.

So really, I was just bored reading this. So bored that not even the sapphic romance could get me interested (sadly). But if, unlike me, you have a better attention span and enjoy historical fiction where not a lot happens…

Well, you might well like this.

Royal Tudor life as seen by a launderess. Arriving at the palace to work for Aueen Mary Tudor, Alys finds herself sent to the household of the princess Elizabeth to work as a spy. Alys also has secrets of her own.
A nicely flowing story of the life of Mary Tudor and Elizabeth, but seem from the servants eyes.
Not a particularly memorable story, but a nice enough read.

It’s the mid-16th century as Mary Tudor wants to bring England back to place of which to be proud. But it’s not a popular opinion; in fact, a lot of the public want to see Mary’s next in line to the throne, a certain Elizabeth, reign – which makes things difficult for the queen. Alys Twist is a orphan brought to work in the royal court. It’s the opportunity that one so young can only dream of, but it comes with opportunity – if she’s willing to take it. She’s asked to spy on the household… Surely no good will come of this? Suzannah is known for her painstaking detail of the period and for her research and this does not disappoint.

I wasn’t sure what to make of this book to start with as it’s quite different to many historical novels I’ve read of this time period but once I got further into it I really appreciated it. The central character for once isn’t a royal or in fact from any noble family, she is a laundress. And this is what makes it so unique for once you get a view of royal Tudor life from a very different perspective. Princess Elizabeth and Queen Mary although central to the story are instead almost like extras in their own stories as you get glimpses of them through Alys’s eyes.

Alys Twist is an orphan who has worked hard and is given a job as laundress to Queen Mary’s wardrobe. Soon after starting work for the Queen she meets and becomes friend’s with Bel the daughter of the Queen’s tailor. She is at last happy with her lot. But in a time when there is widespread rebellion, Alys is soon on the move again as pressed into service as a spy in Princess Elizabeth’s household, as a laundress.

I like Suzannah Dunn's takes on Tudor history as she writes well, uses modern vernacular to make historical characters 'just like us' and usually does her research on the material aspects of history. Here, she's clearly done her homework on Tudor dress as she drip-feeds information on its creation, the care it takes in terms of washing, mending and storage, and the way it is re-used e.g. rich dresses being cut up to make cushions (something which academic research has been exploring over the last 10-20 years). However, a convincing background is not enough to make a riveting read and after an intriguing start the story seems to lose its way.

Set just as Mary I has swept to the throne, Alys, our laundress, works first at Whitehall and then, in a convenient but not very credible fashion, is sent to Elizabeth as an informant. I'm quite happy to have a fly-on-the-wall look at well-known historical figures and events but Alys just isn't important enough to have much of a view of the intrigue of this period. At about 50% through the book the whole thing turns away, to a large extent, and the peripheral action struggled to hold my interest. Alys herself doesn't seem to be particularly interested in court politics or to care whether Mary or Elizabeth is to be queen. The story ends a year into Mary's marriage and is inconclusive. As much as I like Dunn's prose, I'd have liked to have seen a more decisive story emerge.

I love historical fiction especially set around 1553 when we have a divided England, Mary Tudors in charge and yet things aren't so great because there's rebellion in favour of her heir, who we all know as her half sister Princess Elizabeth.
We meet Orphan Alys Twist who never dared set foot in a royal household and is now working with the Royal wardrobe. There the lovely Bel who is the tailor's daughter, and she soon realises that she is in the strange position of seeing what's going on and looking into other people's lives from afar.
I really enjoyed this story, the pages flew by and the tudor history is my favourite. It was interesting to learn what and how the royal household dressed and the work that was involved.
I loved Alys and Bels characters and even though they were a little naughty I was still hoping they would be ok.
As a spy in the household her life was at risk.. You'll have to read it to find out what happened.
Lovely words by Suzannah Dunn - I will definitely be looking out for more of her work. Thank you to Netgalley for this advanced copy.

This book is set in the short period of Queen Mary I’s reign, beginning just after she has acceded to the throne, in 1553. We see into this period of history from the first person perspective of Alys, a laundress and by her own account, ‘a nobody’, who has made it her life’s business to go unnoticed and skip from household to household, until one day she finds herself in the royal laundry, as one of the laundresses to the Queen’s household. From here Alys befriends the tailor’s daughter and is in a unique perspective to see into the inner life of the Queen’s chambers occasionally.

Alys considers herself lucky to have risen so high, but her main concern is to keep her own secrets secret; the main one being that she ran out on her husband and is pretending that she’s never been married. But her new life settles in on her and she becomes content, after a sudden romance begins between her and Bel, the tailor’s daughter. This then appears in danger of being upset, when Alys is suddenly thrust into the household of the Queen’s sister, the Princess Elizabeth, as a spy, instead.

I found Elizabeth as a princess to be one of the most intriguing characters in the book, but we never really get too close to her or her ladies in waiting - Alys’s knowledge is limited to what she overhears or what she can ascertain through the clothes she washes, which makes for frustrating reading at times. At other moments, Alys seems to have unlikely luck in seeing as much as she does, for instance travelling in the same barge as Elizabeth to the Tower of London.

I did enjoy this well-written foray into Tudor England, it offers a slightly different perspective to the period against similar novels such as those by Philippa Gregory, so I think it sits well alongside these.