Sharon Butler

“Interesting and thought-provoking “. I second that comment. Quite a deviation from other JP books, and while I did finish it, I agree that you can get bogged down in the historical details and keeping all the characters straight. The research JP did seems evident (bibliography given), and her arguments are compelling. But I doubt many universities will stop their Shakespeare appreciation classes based on this book alone. Some things you just can’t undo, and glorification of the bard may be one of them.

This book was so sappy, predictable and just “too perfect”. I read most of it, because it seemed to have some potential, but I stopped with 5 chapters left to go because I could have written them myself. All broken relationships (and there were so many that it was hard to keep up at times) miraculously resolved. Readers like a little bit of unpredictability in stories, but this book did not give that. I don’t want to be half way into a book and know exactly how it all ends. In this book, you could have done that about 20 chapters in.

I wish there were an option for zero stars. I read Steele for years, but then she started to treat her readers like morons, and I stopped for a while. Picked this up, because I liked the synopsis, and now…I am DONE with her books. She stated a situation in the story 5 TIMES in 3 pages. I felt like screaming “I get it, already!” The writing is sophomoric, at best, and at its worst, totally predictable. I finished it, but only to confirm my feeling that this is last book of hers that I will read.