I picked this up on a whim at the library a month or so ago, partially because Erin reviewed it and liked it well enough (at least I remember her reviewing it, but now I can’t find the link) and partially because I’ve read and like some of Carolyn Meyer’s other stuff.
And this one was okay. Nothing spectacularly brilliant, but nothing really bad either. It’s the story of Anne (Agnes) Hathaway, and how she came to marry Will Shakespeare. It’s an interesting enough story, but a less-than engaging one. I liked Agnes/Anne, but I really didn’t feel that connected to her. I was interested in her life at the beginning, but after a while I just got bored. So her mother died when she was little, and her father married a shrew. So she fell in love with a rogue and accidentally set fire to her father’s barn. So a man she was engaged to died from a fever. So she was 26 when she married an 18 year old because he got her pregnant. I really wasn’t all that interested. Which is sad; I should have been. There is so little known (the author’s note, while brief, was fascinating) about Shakespeare and Anne, that this really could have been a compelling love story. But it wasn’t. Maybe it was because of the length of time involved: the book covers 47 years, beginning with Will’s birth and ending when he comes back to Stratford-on-Avon from London five years before his death. Maybe I just wanted more… I seem to be wanting that from a lot of YA books these days. (Well, maybe not “a lot”, but this isn’t the first time.) But it just felt like a very long list: this happened, then this happened, then several months passed and this happened. And that doesn’t make for a very engaging story.
The Book Nut 
While I enjoyed Loving Will Shakespeare more than you did apparently. I think the problem with novels like these are that they try to tackle too much…cover too many years. It’s hard for a “YA” book to cover a person’s life from birth to death without being this happened, this happened, this happened, then this happened, forever and ever.
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You’re right, Becky. I would have liked this book more if it either 1) gave me more details about the events (thereby becoming, probably, an adult book) or 2) narrowed the scope of time. I say that, though, without any idea of how she could have done either.
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I actually have not reviewed this book. I started reading it this fall and never even finished it. Guess I didn’t find it compelling, either. 🙂
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Well color me embarrassed. I swore I saw it over at your place, Erin. Bleh. Maybe it was Becky’s review, after all?
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I had it listed as “currently reading” in my sidebar for quite a while. Maybe you saw it there….Regardless, it’s not a problem. 🙂
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i’m glad that you said that about seeming to want a lot from YA books. I’ve been reading them a lot lately too and even adult books and many of them have been leaving me, i don’t know, sorely disappointed. i think i might have mentioned that i felt similarly to you about the whole Twilight series which if felt was a complete waste of my time. i really wish i could find a good thick book, even a trilogy, that i could sink my teeth into and feel that it’s a world i don’t ever want to leave. now THAT’s a good book! thansk for your thoughts.
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Maybe the author stuck too religiously to the facts, and could have used a little creative reinterpretation.
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Actually, lydia, that’s part of the problem here. There’s so little known about Shakespeare (that’s partly why I found the author’s note fascinating) that there’s a lot of room for creative interpretation. She just didn’t really take it (IMHO).
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