{"id":168,"date":"2020-04-15T14:20:25","date_gmt":"2020-04-15T18:20:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/samiamreadingandreviewing.wordpress.com\/?p=168"},"modified":"2025-06-24T21:04:11","modified_gmt":"2025-06-24T21:04:11","slug":"to-shield-the-queen-fiona-buckley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/?p=168","title":{"rendered":"To Shield the Queen – Fiona Buckley"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I\u2019ll be honest; I procrastinated checking this book out from the library because I didn\u2019t like the cover. I feel, in that respect, that I did the book a disservice – it\u2019s unfair to not want to read a book because the cover art is bad, just like you shouldn\u2019t feel bad about disliking a book whose cover art is amazing. I guess we have to refer to the old adage \u201cdon\u2019t judge a book by its cover,\u201d and it has never been so true in this situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Cover Art that I Dislike<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We are introduced to Ursula Blanchard in this novel, and what an eventful novel it is! Ursula is a destitute widow who has joined Queen Elizabeth as one of her ladies in waiting, following in her mother\u2019s footsteps. In doing so, she\u2019s had to leave her daughter Meg with her nurse, Bridget. To earn extra money to keep Meg and Bridget comfortable, Ursula agrees to live with a courtier\u2019s dying wife to comfort her in her final days. When she comes back from a day at the fair to find the wife dead at the bottom of the stairs, and her manservant close to death after being attacked, Ursula realizes that the world she\u2019s entered into is more sinister than she\u2019s thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It takes Ursula\u2019s wits, cunning, and a fair amount of sacrifice for her to discover who killed her manservant and patient. With the help of her maid, Bridget, and other loyal friends, she follows a dangerous and heartbreaking path to solve this mystery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are a lot of features about this book that I enjoyed, one being that Ursula just seems to fall into detecting, although I don\u2019t think that she would call it that. She was just trying to find justice for her manservant when she discovered plots within plots. Ursula shows an incredible amount of bravery in this book, and I was really surprised by that. There was a ton of action in this novel, certainly more than I would expect for a series debut. However, it totally worked. I feel that I learned Ursula pretty well, and developed an affection for her maid, manservant, Bridget, etc\u2026 even the ailing wife. Buckley does a really nice job of making genuine and believable characters that work well into the story. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also liked Ursula\u2019s sense of romanticism in this novel; she mourns her lost husband, Gerald, while being honest about her feelings for another courtier, Matthew. This book is told in her first-person perspective in retrospect, so she adds reflective comments that add to the story. The conflict of her emotions throughout the novel are present in her every thought, and readers can truly feel her torment when she has to make difficult decisions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At this point I will add a disclaimer: I did skip a portion of this novel. It was not intentional<\/em>; I had looked ahead to make sure that a character was alright and totally got sucked into the passage I had landed on!! Then, before I knew it, I was turning pages and it was too late to turn back. I am not guilty of this offense very frequently, but, go ahead, judge me if you will. Despite my heinous crime, I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. It was a pleasant read\u00a0 and full of twists, turns, and even some romance. I will read the next book in the series regardless of its cover!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ll be honest; I procrastinated checking this book out from the library because I didn\u2019t like the cover. I feel, in that respect, that I did the book a disservice – it\u2019s unfair to not want to read a book because the cover art is bad, just like you shouldn\u2019t feel bad about disliking aContinue reading “To Shield the Queen – Fiona Buckley”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":170,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[52,89,98,120,135,283,329,344,374,426,434,435],"class_list":["post-168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-book-review","tag-cozy-mystery","tag-debut-novel","tag-england","tag-fiona-buckley","tag-murder-mystery","tag-queen-elizabeth","tag-review","tag-series-debut","tag-to-shield-the-queen","tag-ursula-blanchard","tag-ursula-blanchard-mysteries","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/img_20200317_192127777-scaled.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=168"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":669,"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168\/revisions\/669"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}