I really struggled with this book. I don’t think the dual timelines work and I had no idea what I was reading most of the time. I had to force myself to keep reading. I thought the premise would be good going in but maybe this book was not for me.

Thank you to NetGallery and to Harlequin Trade Publishing for giving me a copy for.a honest review.

I really tried to get onto this because it is about Robert Dudley’s wife. However, I could not get into it. I did not like the modern plot. It seemed irrelevant to the main story and was very distracting. I also read other novels about Robert Dudley’s wife that are far more superior than this version. One of the more superior reads is My Queen, My Enemy by Jean Plaidy! Thus, this is a very mediocre version of a famous scandal!

(2.5 stars, rounded up)

During the Tudor era, Amy Robsart marries Robert Dudley and is suspicious of his affection for Princess Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth I). Her death casts a cloud of suspicion and doubt over Dudley, who will never be able to marry Elizabeth after the scandal.

In present-day London, Lizzie Kingdom is a child star turned children's author who is currently gearing up for her spot on a Dancing With the Stars-style show. Her childhood and current best friend Dudley Lester isn't as successful as Lizzie, but they've remained close over the years. When his wife Amelia dies, Dudley is under investigation by the police.

Lizzie has psychometry, which allows her to see and know things from touching objects. She encounters a gem at Dudley and Amelia's wedding which gives her insight into Amy Robsart (or possibly Amelia's) death. After Amelia dies, her brother Johnny Robsart contacts Lizzie about her death because he believes the events are tied to his ancestor Amy. The links between the past and present are obvious, especially with the characters having almost identical names.

I picked up this novel looking for a Tudor mystery, but it is in essence two different stories — a Tudor historical fiction with a contemporary supernatural mystery. With the addition of psychometry and time travel, the story falls further away from my expectations.

Recommended for readers looking for a supernatural mystery who also like historical fiction.

A brilliantly conceived tale blending historical fiction with the mystery in the Tudor era. Cornick weaves through time to unravel what happened back in 1560 while still grounding the story in the present. This is the first novel I have read by the author, but it will not be the last. Her writing is eloquent and grips you from the very begining. Simply fabulous!

I appreciate the publisher allowing me to read this book. I really enjoyed this story and recommend for anyone interested in Tudor historical fiction.

I typically love historical fiction based on a true story, but this book did not impress me as I hoped it would. I did enjoy the multiple time periods aspect of the story, but I'm not really a fantasy/paranormal/time travel fan, so that made me lose interest. I did go on to read about the true story that this was based on, so I do thank this author for teaching me a new history tidbit! Overall, I thought the writing was well done, but the book didn't hook me right away so it was a slow read for me.

This book features a dual timeline story that is told from 16th century Tudor times and the present day. It centers around the mysterious death of Amy Robsart. Amy was married to Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester.

In the present day Dudley Lester Amelia Robsart are preparing to divorce until she is found dead at the bottom of the stairs. The same way Amy Robsart was found in the 16th century. The story does an excellent job blending the historical and modern perspectives.

Overall, Nicola Cornick did an excellent job developing a well-paced and entertaining novel. Readers will be satisfied by the blending of historical fact and engaging fiction.

I was provided a copy of this book by NetGalley for an honest opinion of the novel.

The Forgotten Sister by Nicola Cornick is a historical mystery with touches of science fiction and paranormal. The story is told in dual timelines from the sixteenth century Tudor era and the current time along with being told from differing points of view.

The timeline in 1560 features Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, who was a member of Queen’s Elizabeth’s court and his wife, Amy Robsart. These characters were real in the Tudor era but they are involved in this story in a fictional take on their lives where Amy and Robert were in a loveless marriage.

In the present time Lizzie Kingdom is a television celebrity who is going through a scandal. Lizzie’s best friend, Dudley Lester, is a rock star who is married to Amelia. Dudley and Amelia are set to divorce when Amelia dies a suspicious death.

As someone who is always attracted to the Tudor era I was curious when I saw that timeline involved in a mystery/paranormal type of story. This was one that the dual timelines flowed well and it was easy to follow as the point of view switched between characters. This novel ended up being the type that had some of the parts that had me totally engaged and loving the story then other parts that just seemed to stall out for me and I didn’t quite like. Overall when I was finished reading The Forgotten Sister I’d say this interesting mix of genres fell in at about three and a half stars for me.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.

Thank you NetGalley for the eARC. I normally dont like books that switch back and forth from past to present but I love anything Tudor related and this was no exception. Well written and it really flowed

A HUGE fan of The Tudor families and mystery novels I literally devoured this book in a day! With a dual timeline mixed with a curse was for me a added bonus. I thoroughly enjoyed the characters and storyline. A new author to me I loved every minute of this book and look forward to reading more books by This author. Fantastic!

On one hand, I really loved that the book centered around Amy Dudley and her story, since I've never read anything about her. Amy Dudley was married to Robert Dudley, who was Queen Elizabeth I's "favorite" which meant she had a longstanding affair with him but did not want to marry him. (Real life drama!) On the other hand, this book has been compared to Philippa Gregory's sweeping historical fictions, and I don't really think that's a good comparison.

The story unfolds in alternating times: the 1500's, centering around Amy Dudley, and present day, centering around Lizzie Kingdom. Lizzie is a famous television personality who finds herself being investigated in the murder of Amelia, who was married to her best friend Dudley.

So the two timelines are related and have similar character names, but it isn't really apparent how they're related into well into the story. Things started out slow and then built up a lot around the middle, and then felt really jumbled toward the end as the big reveals started happening. I think things would have been better for me had the story not had a bit of a magical/supernatural/time travel aspect, but I think there are other readers who will really like that part. I also think that the alternation of the time periods kept me from being fully immersed in either storyline because I was pulled back and forth so often.

I really enjoyed the opportunity to look into Queen Elizabeth I's time. (I stopped reading to go do some research on my own, which I always enjoy.) However, I didn't really feel emotionally attached to anyone and I never really felt like I was *there* watching the story unfold around me.


I received this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. Thank you, Harlequin/Graydon House!

Quite honestly, I struggled to get into this book. The names of the characters from the present are so similar to the ones in the present that I kept having a disconnect (picturing historic figures in modern scenarios). I enjoyed the multiple time periods, especially since Tudor era is a time period that fascinates me.

The Forgotten Sister by Nicola Cornick is coming soon! It's a time slip novel which I usually enjoy. This one is about Amy in 1560 who is married to Robert Dudley but the marriage is anything but loving. Robert has his eyes on the future Queen Elizabeth and treats Amy with no regards whatsoever. Finally, after trying to be a good wife with no positive results, she knows she has to break free to attempt to salvage her life. What happens next may not seem that it relates to modern times, but it does.

In present day, Lizzie Kingdom and her best friend Dudley have always been the subject of scrutiny. Both have been in showbusiness most of their lives so they're always in the public eye. Lizzie has no further feelings for Dudley besides their best friend relationship, but others always speculated there was more than meets the eye. They're wrong, but Lizzie can't seem to convince anyone regardless of the fact that she was at Dudley and his wife, Amelia's wedding and wouldn't cross that line. So she seems content to live her life and put up with the rumors, but that proves to be almost impossible when tragedy strikes.

How these two time lines merge will be up to you to read about. I don't want to ruin anything for anyone!

I was happy to get a copy of this book from Harper Collins and was excited about the premise. Unfortunately, I couldn't get invested in any of the characters or the story. It seemed more written for the YA genre in my opinion. I also found it kind of irksome that the characters in both time frames to have the same names. I understand surnames being used, but not first names. I usually really love time slip stories, but now I know it has to be (at least for me) done just right. This one took me way too long to finish.

With all that being said, I think it will be a hit with a big crowd and I wish the author huge success with the book when it releases on November 10, 2020. Thank you very much to the publisher for this opportunity.

Told between present and Tudor era England, The Forgotten Sister tells the story of Amy Robsart in 1560’s England, where she’s trapped in a loveless marriage and just wants a way out.

We are also introduced to Lizzie, who lives in the present day, and possesses a secret supernatural ability that just might bind her to the past.

These two stories converge in the unlikeliest of ways, and it’s up to Lizzie to right the wrongs of the past.

This novel had an interesting plot and was fun to read, I recommend it!

Season 4 of The Crown, all 10 episodes, hit Netflix on November 15th, 2020. By now every avid fan has gobbled it up. Fortunately, help is at hand for aficionados of royal stories—Nicola Cornick’s The Forgotten Sister. Two women’s lives are intertwined, one historical, Amy Robsart, the first wife of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester and a favorite of Elizabeth I, and the other fictional, Lizzie Kingdom, a young entertainer with a huge fan following.

Cornick writes time-slip novels: “These dual timeline novels are not time-travel books, but rather stories whose perspective slips back and forth between time periods.” Also be mindful that Robsart’s untimely death is a real-life Tudor mystery, over which Cornick layers a curse that echoes through centuries. Our first glimpse of Lizzie is at the 2010 wedding of her lifelong, childhood friend Dudley (emphasis on friend) to the shockingly wealthy Amelia. The rich and famous young idiots’ wedding holds no appeal for Lizzie.

She wandered off in the direction of the luxury portaloos. Evidently the plumbing at Oakhangar Hall, the ridiculously ostentatious wedding present that Amelia’s father had bought for the bride, was not up to coping with two hundred celebrity guests. Nevertheless, the cool darkness of the entrance hall beckoned to her.

Inexplicably, Lizzie hears the melody of a harp, but there’s no harp to be seen, only a huge black grand piano. Yet, the harp’s melody beckons her.

She moved towards the sound and then she saw it, on a little shelf to the right of the door, a crystal ball held in the cupped palms of a stone angel.



The crystal swirled with a milky white mist. Touch me. Lizzie stopped when her hand was about an inch from the crystal surface.

No. The urge was strong but she knew what would happen if she did. Ever since she had been a small child, she had had an uncanny knack of being able to read objects.

“Natural” to Lizzie perhaps but she soon learned that hers was a “gift” not necessarily shared with or lauded by others.

Later, when she looked it up, she saw it was called psychometry. She used it carefully, secretly, to connect with her past and the mother she had lost as a child. The rest of the time she tried not to touch anything much at all if it was likely to give her a vision. She really didn’t want to know.

Her gift seems more like a curse than a blessing. A young boy, Johnny, Amelia’s younger brother, watches Lizzie dither over the little statue. He seems wise beyond his years: Lizzie senses that Johnny understands the strange pull the stone angel has on her. Arthur Robsart, Johnny’s older brother, whisks him away but all hell breaks loose when Lizzie touches the stone angel’s wings. The crystal shatters, Lizzie passes out, waking up to a mad scene. Everyone thinks she’s trying to steal the spotlight from the bride. A shard of crystal embeds itself in her hand and Arthur patches her up. Lizzie hurriedly calls up her driver and takes off. A few days later she discovers the little stone angel among her goody bag detritus. While she meant to return it to Amelia after all the fuss, it never seemed like the right time.

Ten years later, on the 8th of September, Amelia is found dead at the bottom of the stairs. Her marriage with Dudley has foundered, she is alone at her country house when her cleaners discover her.

The parallels between Tudor England and modern-day Britain leap off the page: Queen Elizabeth/Lizzie Kingdom; Amy Robsart/Amelia Robsart; and Dudley/Dudley, who is quite frankly an out-for-himself cad in each time period. Many seemingly peripheral figures, be they managers, friends, cousins, half-sisters, or brothers, mirror each other over time as well.

When Robert Dudley is described as a “favorite of Elizabeth I,” how does that acknowledge the hellishness of Amy Robsart’s fate, married to a man who never loved her? According to Wikipedia, Amy Dudley (née Robsart) “is primarily known for her death by falling down a flight of stairs, the circumstances of which have often been regarded as suspicious.” Robsart was only 28 years old at the time of her death. The scandal surrounding her death likely made it impossible for Queen Elizabeth to ever consider marrying Robert Dudley. Death in Elizabethan England was vicious, often brutal, and not unexpected.

Consider the fallout for Lizzie Kingdom’s life and career after Dudley’s estranged wife is found dead. Death in modern times, for a celebrity, can be the plight of being ignored, vilified, or dropped (i.e. cancel culture). Lizzie and Dudley, as Lizzie comes to regretfully understand, hurt Amelia, who was jealous of their deep friendship. Eventually, Lizzie realizes that in the years after Dudley’s marriage, Dudley abused their friendship, but her awakening is gradual and painful.

Cornick’s portrayal of Amy Robsart shows a woman who rails against her fate: she has a plan to escape her husband and his Queen. That her plan was unsuccessful is the genesis of the curse surrounding her and the house where she died. A teenage Johnny Robsart, desperate to save his dead sister, persuades Lizzie to travel back to Tudor times with him, thinking that if they can change Amy’s fate, perhaps Amelia can also have a different ending. Their entry to the past is the stone angel. Cornick’s historical acumen informs The Forgotten Sister, particularly in her explanations of history’s hold on us. Amy died at Cumnor Hall, which centuries later fell into disrepair. Some of the stones from Cumnor Hall were reused to build a new manor at Oakhangar. Lizzie’s friend Avery references the bits and pieces of “all those monasteries that Henry VIII destroyed.”

“We’re a magpie breed; we take what we want but sometimes, perhaps, we take more than we imagine.”



“You mean that the stone retains a memory of the past in some way,” Lizzie said hesitantly, “that certain buildings can contain the memory of events that had happened hundreds of years ago?”

Avery’s gaze was very direct and very clear. “I think that’s true,” she said quietly. “A physical place can hold an emotional memory.”

Over the centuries, three people die under mysterious circumstances; each time the victim was part of a lover’s triangle, harkening back to Amy, Dudley, and Queen Elizabeth. Can Lizzie Kingdom break the curse and bring peace to Amy Robsart’s troubled soul? What a brilliant story, resonating as it does over time and space. Brava Nicola Cornick.

I so happy to be part of the blog tour for this engaging new novel that bridges between Tudor times and current day. The Fogotten Sister tells parallel stories that deftly weave together into one novel of intrigue, romance, and mystery.
This was a great read! I am a HUGE Tudor fan, and I thought it was quite clever the author blended and paralleled history with present. The mystery kept me guessing and the romance was fun as well.

A fun and satisfying read, especially if you a bit past-obsessed as I am!

Thank you for my review e-copy and making me part of the tour!

The Forgotten Sister by Nicola Cornick was historical fiction with a very unique spin on the dual timeline story. What was unique was the times that each took place was so different. The first vignette is in the 1500s. This explores a real-life mystery connected to the family of Elizabeth I. Then, there's the present day. This focuses on Lizzie Kingdom, a child star, who is drawn into a scandal when her best friend (a rock star)'s wife Amelia is killed. It was interesting to read two stories that were so far apart, yet also see the connections as they were slowly revealed. I was more drawn into the present day storyline, BUT I also learned a lot from the story in the Tudor era as I honestly don't read about it ever. This one had some unexpected turns and definitely some connections I didn't see coming. It was a neat adventure to read something so different from my usual lanes. Thanks to NetGalley and Graydon House Books for letting me go on the journey for this recent release!

The Forgotten Sister
A Novelby Nicola Cornick

Thanks so much to the author and publishing @nicolacornick
@graydonhousebooks @harlequin @harpercollins

This book was received from the Author, and Publisher, in exchange for an honest review. Opinions and thoughts expressed in this review are completely my own.

This is a non spoiler review, because you as reader need to read this book. Also, I feel sometimes I have in the past gave away to much of the plot line. This has diminished the pleasure for would be readers

A page turner of a book is split between the 16th Century Tudor Era and the 21st Century.
Ms. Cornick entices the reader from the historical mystery surrounding Amy Dudley's death. Amy Dudley was the first wife of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, favourite of Elizabeth I of England. She is primarily known for her death by falling down a flight of stairs, the circumstances of which have often been regarded as suspicious

Ms. Cornick newest tale takes a mirrored inventive twist where a correlation between the past might actually mirrors the present and future. The storylines thread together into a pattern that may or may not be breakable.

An innovative propulsive narration, offering both drama and historical mystical realism to make for a captivating novel.

#bookstagram #theforgottensister #nicolacornick #historicalfiction #dualtimeline #thetudors #graydonhousebooks #advancedreaderscopy

*** Blog Tour ***

The Forgotten Sister by Nicola Cornick picks up on the history of Amy Robsart's death and develops an entire two timeline story that incorporates history, love stories, sibling rivalries, celebrity lifestyles, mysterious deaths, and magical realism. This book is unusual in two timeline stories in that I find myself equally engaged in both stories. The book is a fast paced page turner that keeps me engaged until the very end.

Read my complete review at http://www.memoriesfrombooks.com/2020/11/the-forgotten-sister.html

Reviewed for NetGalley and the Fall 2020 historical fiction blog tour from Harlequin Trade Publishing

This story mixes different elements (paranormal, mystery, historical fiction, romance) making them work well together and creating a compelling and entertaining story.
The dual timeline is fascinating even if I preferred the present time part and found Lizzie more interesting than Amy.
I learned about Amy Robsart and a part of the Tudor history I didn’t know. Amy’s timeline was interesting but a bit too slow.
Lizzie’s timeline is more engrossing and it’s interesting how Lizzie grew on me as she changes during the book facing who she really is and how to face other people expectations.
The character development and the storytelling are good, the paranormal part is interesting.
It was a book that kept me hooked and I liked it as it’s engrossing and entertaining.
Recommended.
Many thanks to Graydon House and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine