" 2.5 stars: I knew going into this that Carolly Erickson isn't exactly known for staying true to facts. She calls her books "historical entertainment" and tends to make up a lot of the characters and their interactions, along with messing around with the dates and time lines or making up events altogether. For example, in this particular book, she invented a secret daughter for Mary, made up the majority of interactions between Mary and Bothwell (considering he was actually imprisoned for much of the time) and made up the entire escape to Rome so it's a bit frustrating to read something so completely inaccurate. With that being said though, the story of Mary is still a very interesting one and I'd like to learn more about her. Hopefully she'll be portrayed a little better in other books! I think for anyone truly interested in learning about Mary though, this book isn't the best choice. It's basically pure fluff and for entertainment only which is what I rated it on, but for historical accuracy, it fails.
When it comes to historical fiction, I need/want more history than fiction so I'm hesitant to read anything else by this author. "
— Joey, 2/8/2014