I absolutely hated this book. I don't know why I finished it, except that I like the way Phillipa Gregory writes, I just don't like what she writes about. The heroine is despicable in every possible way, yet the author clearly expects you to root for her à la Scarlett O'Hara. She commits multiple acts of murder, participates in very creepy incest, and betrays people who love her. I'm not particularly squeamish, but I do require some redeeming qualities in a protagonist if I'm to forgive them all...

Beatrice Lacey. This girl, later woman, was very hurt, very obsessed, brimming with (deservedly) self-importance and very very  *ahem* lustful.That is never a good combination for practially ANTHING.Deranged, oppressive and god damn near suffocating.It’s like watching someone so committed to her road to ruin/success and you have to give props to the woman, disagree with her or not, it takes extraordinary strength and courage (and more than a pinch of delusion) to do it with that sort of owner...

I'm a reader who holds grudges. Disappoint me, and it's likely that an author will get cleaned off my shelves and dumped in the donation bin because if I try to read another title by them, the bad experience keeps lingering and trashes the current read. But Philippa Gregory has been the exception.After two rather blah reads (A Respectable Trade and Fallen Skies, the latter which I will certainly re-attempt), this hefty saga was recommended to me by the awesome Sarah, whose similarly awesome revi...

Horrible drivel! I had to scrub my brain after reading it. The lengths the heroine goes to for her beloved Wideacre would be semi-interesting if we gave a crap in the first place, but since the author can't even manage to do that well we don't give a crap and so it's a waste of our time and money!Other books by this author are far, far better. Skip it! Read 'The Other Boleyn Girl' or 'The Boleyn Inheritance'!Another one that went up on Bookmooch right away, and surprisingly was snapped right up....

Oh man. Beatrice Lacy you are one crazy little bitch. It’s not often that you get to read a story through the eyes of the villain, but I loved it! I know a lot of people didn’t care for the book because they found the protagonist hard to stomach. Oh yeah, and the vomit inducing incest probably didn’t help either. She was perhaps one of the shrewdest, most vile characters I have come across. She had no conscience and took down everything and everyone that stood in her way. Half way through the bo...

Even though it is at times grossly sexual (and I mean gross as in disgusting), the Wideacre trilogy is one of my favorite stories of all time. For me, it really captures the essence of the era, and I loved it so much that I read the entire trilogy (easily 1,500 pages) in about two weeks. If you're not uncomfortable with incest, rape and sodomy, it truly is a wonderful, entertaining read, if for no other reason than to show what lengths people will go to get what they think they want. Highly reco...

Didn't even finish reading this one. The characters are put into neat little boxes: Beatrice is evil, Harry is simpleminded, Celia is demure and kind, etc. The incest was disturbing, but it wasn't the incest that it caused me to stop reading the book. I just reached a point where I realized that I had already read 400+ pages of a book I didn't like and was only 2/3 of the way through. I felt like my time would be better spent doing just about anything other than reading this ridiculous book.I've...

I've never read any of Ms Gregory's Tudor novels. The Tudor era doesn't particularly interest me (though I'm not opposed to the period if a novel has elements I enjoy), so I was intrigued by this trilogy for three reasons: 1) the Georgian setting; 2) her earlier (supposedly less-romantic) work; 3) the negative reviews due to an antagonistic & incestuous heroine.I agree the incest is gross. It's definitely not the sort that draws a reader's sympathy (like, say, Flowers in the Attic). But once Bea...

This book was something else! I LOVED it! Beatrice is the most insane, deranged, evil?, main character I’ve ever come across in historical fiction. I mean seriously badass! The book was also shocking in many ways all involving the deeds and plans of Beatrice Lacey. She is like a ramped up Scarlett O Hara.All the while I was reading this my own ‘inner reading voice’ was making me laugh!: No, she didn’t just do that! She can’t do that ! What is wrong with this woman? What a bitch! Say, what now? N...

I loved the first half of this book. Beatrice Lacey is by far the most horrible, hateful, despicable narrator I've ever read, but I found myself rooting for her throughout all her scandalous deeds- the conspired murder, the attempted murder, the committed murder, the incest, the hidden pregnancies, and on and on the list goes. I even found myself disliking sweet little Celia, as wonderful a woman as she was, simply because she was Beatrice's enemy. That, I think, is the mark of a truly wonderful...

PG likes incest a lot more than I do.

Beatrice is one of my favorite characters of all times. She is confident, self-assured, unyielding, and maybe one of the biggest bitches in literature. With all the books out there that negate women's power and authority (uh hm...TWILIGHT), Gregory knows how to create a character that uses her strong feminine prowess and works the system. "The system" being the 18th century society in which women had very few rights and entitlement. What I think redeems Beatrice is her connection with the land a...

Very strong social message in this book.

This book was crazy.It was trashy, entertaining, and scandalous. Beatrice was an unlikable character but I LOVED her. She was shameless, and it was oddly refreshing to not have her (really) angst about her moral failings.This was, to date, the most entertaining book Gregory has ever written.Beatrice reminded me a lot of Scarlett, but like the bad girl version.Also some V.C. Andrews thrown in with the incest and gothic feels. Not for the faint of heart tho.

I really wonder what Philippa Gregory was going for in this novel, because she certainly didn't give us a likable heroine in the slightest. Beatrice Lacey is one of the most horrible, nasty protagonists I've read...and honestly I enjoyed her scandalous behavior. I went into this novel knowing that she was a universally disliked character, and I think that really helped my overall enjoyment of this.I did find myself actually wishing Beatrice would get her way during parts of the novel, which surp...

Dark, disturbing and downright demented family sagas are my thing, and the Lacey's of Wideacre definitely fit that bill. Our 'heroine' is daughter of the house, Beatrice, for whom incest, murder, scheming and wrecking is a day well spent. Batshit crazy for her is child's play; this sick bitch is the real deal and I loved her for it. Being inside her warped head with all its twisted reasonings had me sympathising with her to a point; I hated what she did, but I understood why she did it, and the

I'm a pretty big fan of Philippa Gregory, but I found this one to be very disturbing! I almost liked the fact that the main character was so scandalous and cold-hearted because it made the "heroine" of the story be the person you wanted to see lose which made it different from most of the books I've read. But I don't think I've ever been so grossed out by a book before.. the sex scenes in the book wouldn't really have bothered me - except that she was sleeping with her BROTHER! And I don't mean

The only reason I gave this book a star is because the darn system wouldn't let me give less. Now, I'm not a prude who doesn't like my book to contain a bit of a steamy scene once in a while. In fact, bring it on. JUST NOT WITH YOUR BROTHER. I loved the time period of this book, and initially I was impressed with the strength of the heroine. However...she lost me when she started thinking up ways to seduce her brother. And chucked a darling hubby out the window (Not literally). What was that abo...

I’m going to disagree with the majority of reviews here and say that I loved the book. I couldn’t put it down so much that I had read over half of it on the first day of purchase. I really liked the style of writing, the way you felt every emotion, good or bad that Beatrice was going through. The incestuous theme seems to have caused quite a stir here but for me the lead up to it was so intense that I found myself rooting for it to happen! Yes Beatrice is evil, and yes she is certainly vile but

Where I got the book: my local library, because the one that was on my bookshelf disappeared years ago. Ah, Philippa Gregory. One of the most read, and most reviled, of living historical novelists. Brickbats mostly take the form of stabs at her loose writing and her historical inaccuracies, although I can't say much about the latter as I'm no historian and as long as writers get things more or less in the right era, I'm usually OK.I tend towards liking PG's books more than hating them, even thou...

I have never read a book where I detested the protagonist more than I did in this one. I have read other of Phillipa Gregory's books and always liked the main character but this one is a dozzy. She is selfish, she betrays almost everyone in her life all in the need to own the house and property where she grew up, Wideacre. She even has well I don't want to spoil the plot, so I will only say that I couldn't wait for her to get what she deserved. I just couldn't like her but there are other nice c...

Not nearly as good as some of Gregory's other books.And not nearly as good as Virgin Earth, which featured some of the same characters. Never a good sign when you find yourself skimming through the descriptions of the english garden in search of more drama.

This book is seriously trash. We see events through Beatrice, our main character and villian. She is so terribly bad with no redeeming quality, it is ridiculous. This is the first in a triliogy, and I won't be reading another. I actually really like Gregory's historical fiction, but I think she must be better when she is left in the confines of real events and people. When she allows her own imagination to run wild, it goes really wild, to the laughable. How did you feel about the movie Show Gir...

Though I loved The Other Boleyn Girl by P. Gregory, I did not enjoy this one. The main character was a complete witch and didn't deserve any sympathy. I only kept reading it so that she would get her cumupins, which she rightly deserved. There was one particular aspect of the book that made my skin crawl and I felt dirty for just reading it. I have really no desire to read the other books in the trilogy if all of them are like this.

Wowee! What a sociopath the main character in this story is! Beatrice Lacey at fifteen knows she never wants to leave her beloved home at Wideacre. If this means parricide, murder and incest so be it. All I can say is Gregory has written yet another very interesting tale. While you find yourself uncomfortable inside Beatrice's head the story is so salaciously intriguing that you can't stop reading because you need to know the outcome for the dozens of other much more sympathetic characters invol...

This book was even better the second time around. I think I was a bit young when I first picked this up. I didn’t quite catch the foreshadowing. Missed some of the intricacies of the charade that is this book.Beatrice is not particularly friendly or good natured. She’s complex in that she’s always conflicting herself. She idolizes her father, yet she’s responsible in some way for his death. She has a heart for the people, yet she starves them. Her love and heart for the land morphs into somethin...

If Gone With the Wind happened in England...it might look a little like this!A ruthlessly sexy yet detestible anti-heroine captivates your attention as she will do anything to inherit her childhood plantation, including[--------SPOILER--------:]arrange the murder of her own father, murder the murderer, commit incest with her brother, strangle-hold her own sister-in-law, arrange the murder of her mother, and drive her husband to ruin.Yet with all this evil, the book's genteel language and spectac...

I had heard soooo much about Philippa Gregory's novels. I had initially wanted to read "The Other Boleyn Girl" first, but it was unavailable, so I picked up Wideacre first and cracked it open with anticipation....I think I had read 4 chapters before I threw it against the wall. I think there has only been a couple of times where I just can't finish a book, usually I'll plod through just because I feel guilty for not finishing! But with this book, I just absolutely hated the characters! Ugh! I'll...

I finished this book a couple of days ago, and I'm still thinking of the last line of it. A book that can get that response deserves five stars.This book, in addition to that, also did the very difficult job of telling a story that was compelling and moving while at the same time starring and unlikeable character. Beatrice Lacey is a young woman with her while life ahead of her and only one thing she wants: her father's land, Wideacre. As this is a story set in the eighteen hundreds, Beatrice co...

This is just plain silly. I had no preconceptions about Philippa Gregory when I started it, and I initially thought it was a serious historical novel, until it turned into (literally) bodice-ripping trash. The whole thing was so completely implausible. I don't have a problem with such a loathsome main character -- it's quite a challenge writing a book whose "heroine" is so unpleasant -- but did all the other characters have to be quite so stupid and blind? It also seemed to me that in reality, B...