Review: The Queen’s Tears by Elizabeth St.John

A stolen crown jewel and an enigmatic portrait force two women to confront the devastating choices they made for love—and summon the courage to live with the truth.

1619: Barbara, Lady Villiers, at the bidding of her brother-in-law, the Duke of Buckingham, has stolen the dying Queen Anna’s jewels—and kept the greatest prize for herself. The Queen’s Tears, a brooch of extraordinary value, torments her: too dangerous to sell, too priceless to discard, and possibly her only means of securing her children’s future. When the family fortunes are shattered, Barbara faces an impossible choice: remain loyal to Buckingham—or betray him by confessing the theft to King Charles.

Present Day: Julia Darke opens her Cotswolds bookshop to start life over peacefully. Instead, a Van Dyck portrait of Barbara’s daughter, with tantalising signs of the missing Queen’s Tears hidden in plain sight, brings her face-to-face with Oliver Villiers, the Oxford art conservator she once loved and walked away from.

Reluctantly drawn together to uncover Barbara’s secret, Julia and Oliver follow the trail of the Queen’s Tears—and the closer Julia comes to Barbara’s truth, the harder it becomes to hide from her own.

Inspired by the true stories of Queen Anna of Denmark’s stolen jewels and a missing Van Dyck painting,The Queen’s Tearsweaves history, fiction, and family research across the centuries. Readers ofThe Lydiard Chronicleswill find old favourites—and a new heroine following in their footsteps.

My Review

This book was such a pleasant surprise! I normally don’t enjoy books that send the protagonist through some kind of “Alice in Wonderland” door to another era. This novel is most definitely not one of those. We have two completely different protagonists, two different stories, linked together by a painting, a family history, and a missing jewel called the Queen’s Tears. In the seventeenth century we have Barbara Villiers, sister to the Lucy we read about in previous volumes. Barbara is a bit of a rogue, definitely protective of herself and her family, placed into a situation where her better judgment is overwhelmed by greed. She is present at the bedside of the dying Queen Anna, and makes away with many royal jewels under the direction of the Duke of Buckingham. That’s bad enough, but she accidently got her hands on the precious Queen’s Tears, and decides to keep it for herself. She knows it will be missed:

I place the jewel back in its home.
Snap the box shut.
Gather up the pouches.
Draw their strings.
And drop the box back into the drawer, thrusting the secret compartment shut again.
They will never know.
I deserve it.
They don’t.
Not the Hugons, nor the Catholics. And certainly not Buckingham.
Tears of a Queen.
Tears of a mother.
You belong to me.

Such guilt to carry around with her! Anyway, the present day story concerns Julia, whose obsession about a painting–initially thought to be of Barbara–brings her into contact with an old lover and a whole slew of unresolved heartbreaks. Both past and present stories have their own complicated plot lines, and we go back and forth between them, though surprisingly I didn’t find the transitions difficult to navigate. I was thoroughly taken in by both stories, and the author has a knack for pacing that I found irresistible. This was an amazingly well thought-out novel, and I found it very satisfying.

Universal Buy Link: https://geni.us/TheQueensTears

This title is available to read on #KindleUnlimited.

Meet Elizabeth St.John

Elizabeth St.John’s acclaimed historical fiction brings to life her ancestors—remarkable women linked to England’s royalty—offering unique insights into Medieval, Tudor, and Stuart times. Her novels unfold not just as traditional series, but as an interlocking web of lives: The Lydiard Chronicles—including the celebrated The Lady of the Tower—The Godmother’s Secret, and The King’s Intelligencer explore everything from the English Civil War to the mystery of the Princes in the Tower. Her newest novel, The Queen’s Tears, a dual timeline pursuing a stolen crown jewel, reunites favourite characters from the seventeenth-century with a present-day bookstore owner heroine.

At the heart of her writing is the transformation of real ancestral histories into narratives of historical continuity. She follows threads of legacy through generations, guided as much by wills, letters, portraits, country churches, ruined castles, manor houses, and lost gardens as by imagination. Locations become constant companions through time, while characters whisper across centuries—their decisions resonating in the lives of their descendants to reveal how choices shape legacies. Grounded in historic sites like Lydiard Park and the Tower of London, her work creates a living archival flow that continues to flourish as the past yields its secrets.

Elizabeth divides her time between California, England, and the past, surrounded by books, gardens, and animals, with a slightly bewildered, ever-supportive husband beside her.