Julia A Hickey’s The Kingmaker's Women is the story of Anne Beauchamp Neville and her daughters, Isabel and Anne. Topics include marriage, childbirth and survival of aristocratic women in the fifteenth century. If you love historical fiction, this book is for you! I voluntarily read and reviewed a complimentary copy of this interesting, informative book.

Hickey makes the statement: "... identity and importance came from their role as daughters, and , later, as wives of the great and the good ...". Whilst true of the period, and of the periods both before and after, it is a rather disappointing one to make if you are writing a book that focuses on, brings to the fore, the women who were central in the events known as the Wars of the Roses.

However, as the blurb tells us from the beginning: "The lives of Countess Anne and her daughters have much to say about marriage, childbirth and survival of aristocratic women in the fifteenth century." Unfortunately it is the reverse - the author has much to say on marriage, childbirth and domesticity in the fifteenth century, but very little on her chosen subjects.

We know there is no documentary trail for us to follow with regards to specifics for these women, and as such, Hickey provides generalities, assumptions and comparisons based on known contemporary sources.

Like many other authors, where the information is just not present, the focus turns to the more documented males and the usual genealogical information (who married who, who inherited what, etc).

The work is taken up to the period of the death of Anne Neville, and finishes up with a brief recap as to what was next for Anne Beauchamp and the fate of her grandchildren under the Tudors. And Hickey does provide the usual accompaniments - family tree, period timeline, a who's who, notes and pictures for those interested.

Unfortunately, for me - personally - I found nothing new; nothing that I did not already know from my own extensive reading, and nothing that could not be found in even the most general history of the Wars of the Roses. For the newcomer, however, this book would make a good starting point - for the more well-read looking for specifics and more details, then less so.

This was a surprising read for me. I think the knowledge or information here is quite more complex in a sense. For a historical content, this was pretty enlightening and and a fun one.

Princess Fuzzypants here: Medieval times were tough on all women. If you were high-born as the three women in this book were, you were at best a bargaining chip to strengthen alliances but often a pawn in the hands of which ever man controlled your destiny. Some were passive. Some were as skillful at the game as any man. But when the man in charge fancies himself the Kingmaker, whose loyalties, like so many during the War of The Roses, switched allegiances for reward or revenge, life can be good or fraught.

Countess Anne came from Royal stock. She brought with her great wealth and power. Her husband, Richard Neville, parlayed that into even greater position, one that his daughters shared. But alas, with the intrigues and shifts of the time, they shared in the times at the top and also the falls from grace. Their mother held a lofty position but both of the daughters outdid their mother.

One, Isabel, was the wife of the man who would be king, Duke of Clarence. The other, Anne, was crowned the Queen of Richard III. Neither lived to see the final falls of their husbands. As much as was possible in the matrimonial chess game of the time, both women found love in their marriages to the York brothers. But despite all the wealth, they both saw much tragedy and sorrow.

This is an interesting book on three influential women in one family. It is an even-handed telling of the stories from which many myths and legends have emerged.. Four purrs and two paws up.

This book tells the story of the Wars of the Roses from the perspective of the Neville women. Yet the sources about their lives are scarce. The author supplements the available information with what we know about the lives of aristocratic women in general. It highlights how women may have been pawns in the schemes of men to gain power—or they may have been acting in their own interest behind the scenes. Ultimately, we can't always know the truth. But it's refreshing to see how women were affected by the battles for succession that changed England's history forever.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.

I'll start off by saying a 3 star review does not make this a bad book, or even an average book. It's well written, well researched and a good history of the Wars of the Roses. However it not really a book about The Kingmaker's Women, which I took to mean the women surrounding the Earl of Warwick - Anne Beauchamp, Isabel and Anne Neville. All these women play important roles in the period and I was intrigued to learn more but, ultimately, the author faces the same issues as all previous historians of the period - a lack of source material.

As is often the case this leads to a lot of hypothesis. Much of the material about the life of women at the time was interesting but we cannot use that to really have a thorough picture of the Neville women which we know to be accurate. Unfortunately, we never will.

So my issues with the book were more about how it is being described. It is, in fact, an interesting history of the family and life for women but not a more detailed biography of these specific women.

Thanks to NetGalley and Pen and Ink History for a copy in return for an honest review.

#TheKingmakersWomen #NetGalley

Interesting read, I had never really heard about these women are their role in European History so it was a new topic for me. I very much enjoyed the read and would recommend it to all history buffs.

I had never heard of these women in history so I enjoyed how good everything brought these women to life. Julia A Hickey has a great writing style and did everything that I was looking for.

I mostly enjoyed this book, but like the other reviewers, it is a bit misleading. The title does suggest that the focus is on Anne Beauchamp, Isabel and Anne Neville but most, not all, is information for those of us that read about the War of the Roses know already. I will state though there was some new information for me. The author does a very thorough job of researching, the best she can, what information she could and speculates, based on history, what she can assume was behavior, reactions, and results of these women. Again, like others, if this book marketed itself as a book on the War of the Roses it would be very good and net a higher rating. I do applaud the author for her effort but feel she fell short of her goal. Thank you to NetGalley, the author and publisher for an advanced copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

Thank you NetGalley, Julia A Hickey, and Pen & Sword for allowing me to read an advanced copy of The Kingmaker's Women. I received an advanced reader copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

I thought this book would be a lot different than what it actually was. It felt pretty bland and like a lot of guesswork was going on in a sense. It was organized well, but probably not one I would choose to read again.

I want to thank Netgalley and Pen & Sword Publishing for an uncorrected copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I want to start by saying that Hickey did a lovely job of writing a book outlining the Neville family's rise and fall throughout the Wars of the Roses. If I were giving a review on that I would rate the book a 3.5 overall. It has a lot of solid facts concerning the motivations and movements of the Neville family over the entire period much of which I found very interesting.

That being said, this book is being mismarketed. Part of the reason I was so interested in this book is that I enjoy history books that center on anyone but the men in power. Given the title of this book, I assumed that it would be right up my alley. I am also particularly curious about Isabel Neville as she is not as well documented as the other women in her family, a fact that Hickey willingly admits throughout the book. However, the number of times phrases such as "we can only speculate", "there is no record of [insert type of record that would be applicable]", and "historians can only guess at..." were frankly too many times for this book to make the argument that "The lives of Countess Anne and her daughters have much to say about marriage, childbirth and survival of aristocratic women in the fifteenth century [excerpt from book blurb on Netgalley]".

Hickey does do an excellent job of painting a picture of what life was like for aristocratic women more generally during this time. The facts concerning childbirth, churching, and the running of estates painted a vivid picture. The section where Hickey details the use of jewelry during pregnancy for protection was one of my favourite parts of the book. However, Anne Beauchamp and her daughters should have been the central focus of these facts rather than using generally known facts to fill in information about these women because they simply are limited in the historical records.

I also really struggled throughout this book when Hickey did cite a direct source that included or mentioned or was written by these three women. When a source was presented I do not feel that Hickey gave enough information or detail about the sources that were available. I understand that given the approximately 550 years since these events and the fact that they were women means the likelihood of these sources surviving or being detailed is small, but not digging deeper into any available sources was a little frustrating for me as a reader. For example, only a single letter from Anne Beauchamps was cited in the book. Is this because it's the only one available?

Another area that was particularly frustrating for me as the reader is that Hickey would present an entirely interesting fact or argument but seem to provide no further elaboration on that point. For instance, there was a lot of discussion about how Anne Neville was close to her illegitimate sister Margaret because both women were often in close proximity to one another. This is an argument I can fully get behind. I just wish that Hickey had provided further information about why she believes that their relationship was a strong one. Particularly since throughout the book Hickey almost makes the reverse argument about Anne Neville and Richard III (e.g., we cannot say if they were a partnership as there is no evidence even though they were often together in the North). If we had taken a tangent and discussed Warwick's third daughter a little more in the book I would have been perfectly fine with that.

Overall, I would recommend this book if you are looking for a more general understanding of aristocratic female culture during the Wars of the Roses OR a biography of the Neville family during this time. There are many facts about aristocratic women's behaviours, beliefs, and experiences throughout this book that paint a picture of how many of them likely lived, but this is not a book that will give you a clear picture of Anne Beauchamp or either of her daughters, Isabell or Anne Neville. However, if you have an interest in these women's husbands and their extended male kin this is also a good book to read.

Content Warnings
Graphic: Confinement, Infertility, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Grief, Death, Murder, Child death, War, and Pregnancy
Minor: Infidelity

I was really torn on how to rate this book. As a book on the Wars of the Roses, the Kingmaker, King Edward IV and the complexities of inheritance, loyalties, and life during this time period, I'd give it a solid 4 stars. It is well-researched, and does a really good job of explaining some of the complexities for why people switched sides back and forth (and were allowed to!) during the course of the wars. The details of inheritance and how women could inherit certain things, making them valuable to consolidate power for families, was well explained. So if you are looking for a book that can give you a good base of understanding for much of the Wars of the Roses, this is definitely one to consider and I'd recommend it.

But that isn't how the book is marketed and that's where the problem is. I went into this book expecting to learn about Anne Beauchamp (Warwick's wife) and her daughters Isabel and Anne, who eventually marry George, Duke of Clarence and Richard, Duke of Gloucester (King Richard III), respectively. From the title to the description, they are advertised as the focus of the book. The problem is, there is little to no surviving evidence of these women in the records history has left us. There are bits and pieces- occasionally we know where they were at certain times compared to their father or husbands. Sometimes payments for things bought for them turn up in household records. Chroniclers of the time or later occasionally mention them. But almost nothing else. So we get a lot of information on the inheritances of land and some titles the women would have brought to the families because those were recorded, but their lives are still almost as unknown to us by the end of the book as the beginning.

Sometimes it almost felt like this was a well-written book on the Wars of the Roses and the publishers wanted a different angle that would sell the book so had the author add a few things about women in general and the Nevilles in particular. Quite often that was along the lines of "we don't know what they were doing or thinking". It would have worked for me if the author had used contemporary records or letters of other highborn women and done some hypothesizing about Anne and her daughters based on those other women's records. But that's not here either. We get several detailed and similar scenes on what it was generally like for highborn women to go into confinement and give birth, but that fails to carry over into the rest of their lives. Instead we get highly detailed accounts of the men and their actions.

Overall a book that promised one thing, and delivered something entirely different. But a pretty decent book on what it delivered.

I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review

I am very interested in the history of this period and have read various historical fiction novels which feature Anne and Isabelle Neville, daughters of Richard Neville, "The Kingmaker". This allowed me to find out more about these women and their mother, and added extra layers to my knowledge. So often women's voices are lost in history, and this was a welcome read. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in return for an honest review of the book.