An uplifting yet heartbreaking book, "Lady in Waiting" is one book that needs to make your must read list! It contains two stories, one about Jane Lindsay that takes place in the present, and one about Lady Jane Grey that takes place in the mid 1500's.

The Present day Jane is waiting for her husband to make the decision of what he wants to do about the emptiness in their marriage, just as she has waited for him and her parents to make the decisions that have shaped her entire life. While she waits she discovers a ring hidden in a recently acquired book that she decides could have belonged only to Lady Jane Grey. Jane’s quest to learn more about the 16th century Jane leads her on a journey inside her own soul – a journey that leads to the discovery of what duty and choice mean, and the decisions she needs to make to preserve her marriage.

Each character is memorable and realistic. Lady Jane Grey will be a character I will remember for a very long time. Her story broke my heart and yet she amazed me with her strength. Jane Lindsay will also be one that I will not soon forget. Her story is of finding one's self and gaining both strength and insight and learning exactly what she wants.
Both stories, although different, were still about the same thing - choices. Those choices that were made for us, and those that we ourselves make, and what we do with them.

This is a fantastic book that has definitely been one of the best I've read in a long time. I'm now going to be hunting down more Susan Meissner books. She's an author that could easily make my favorite's list!! ( )

When I received this book, it had not been at the top of my list of books to read. However, as I read it, I really enjoyed it a lot more than what I thought I would. I am glad I read it. The author wrote the book with 2 story lines that intersected. That takes a lot of work but she pulled it off with flying colors. By the time I was half way through the book, I was thoroughly glued to it and couldn't put it down. The protagonists were fascinating characters whom I was wondering what would happen to them. I strongly recommend this book.

I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review. ( )

This story is actually two stories that twine around one another via a small fragment of history—a ring, inscribed in Latin, shoved into the spine of a prayerbook from the 16th century and discovered hundreds of years later. Who is the Jane so lovingly addressed in the ring's inscription? And why does Jane Lindsay, a middle-aged antique shop manager in 21st-century Manhattan, find herself so drawn to the ring's untold tale?

The Jane of the inscription is Lady Jane Grey, fourth in line for the throne of England at a particularly volatile time in British history. To Jane's young dressmaker, Lucy Day, the world of politics is a dangerous place for her mistress. Lucy's part of the tale follows Jane's life leading up to the startling and tragic events of 1553. It's all conjecture, of course, but it's an entertaining premise that Susan Meissner builds on.

Several hundred years later, Jane Lindsay is shocked when her husband of twenty-two years walks out on her. She never saw it coming. What did she do wrong? How can their relationship be repaired? As Jane struggles to make sense of her life, her quest to find out more about the ring becomes an expression of her growing dissatisfaction with her own weakness and fear in personal relationships.

I enjoyed this quick read, despite its flaws. The two stories could have been spliced more neatly, and the characters beyond the two Janes should have been developed more fully. Brad especially comes across as flat and one-dimensional, and in the end their relational problems are resolved a little too easily. The prose was a bit self conscious as well, and I'll never warm to adjectives that will date a book in twenty years ("her Ann Taylor suit," for example).

But once I gave up being a literary critic and just let myself enjoy the unfolding tale, I quite enjoyed it and grew eager to find out what happened. This story reminded me of Anne Fortier's Juliet, but I liked Lady in Waiting better. ( )

Okay, I bought this off the clearance self.

I admit it -I had no real prior interest in this book until I discovered it on the clearance shelf at my local used book store, and was somewhat intrigued by the blurb. Rather than approaching Jane Grey's story in the traditional, historical fiction sense, author Susan Meissner throws a unique twist into the well-known story by weaving it into a tale of another woman named Jane in modern-day New York.

At the beginning of the novel, Jane is hit with a devastating divorce and is suddenly thrown into a strange new world where there is little to hold onto. That is, until she finds a mysterious ring hidden inside a prayer book that she believes once belonged to the doomed Lady Jane Grey. In Tudor-era England, readers meet Lucy, the dressmaker for Lady Jane Grey and observer of Jane's strange nine-day reign and political drama. Lucy's story helps shine some light on the mysterious ring, though Jane may never know if the ring was Jane Grey's.

Lady in Waiting was a solid novel -not great, not bad, but solid. It reads very quickly -I read it in an afternoon -and offers a fun, escapist adventure through Lady Jane Grey's life and Jane's journey to find herself after her divorce. The writing is solid and comfortable, and the historical accuracy seemed to be consistent with my knowledge of the period, and I especially enjoyed seeing the period from the eyes of a common, though fictional, person, it gave it a different feel and allowed me to see a different side of Tudor England. I'd also like to see more novels integrated a modern element with the historical one -mostly just for something a little bit different.

A worthwhile read for a Sunday afternoon. ( )

An uplifting yet heartbreaking book, "Lady in Waiting" is one book that needs to make your must read list! It contains two stories, one about Jane Lindsay that takes place in the present, and one about Lady Jane Grey that takes place in the mid 1500's.

The Present day Jane is waiting for her husband to make the decision of what he wants to do about the emptiness in their marriage, just as she has waited for him and her parents to make the decisions that have shaped her entire life. While she waits she discovers a ring hidden in a recently acquired book that she decides could have belonged only to Lady Jane Grey. Jane’s quest to learn more about the 16th century Jane leads her on a journey inside her own soul – a journey that leads to the discovery of what duty and choice mean, and the decisions she needs to make to preserve her marriage.

Each character is memorable and realistic. Lady Jane Grey will be a character I will remember for a very long time. Her story broke my heart and yet she amazed me with her strength. Jane Lindsay will also be one that I will not soon forget. Her story is of finding one's self and gaining both strength and insight and learning exactly what she wants.
Both stories, although different, were still about the same thing - choices. Those choices that were made for us, and those that we ourselves make, and what we do with them.

This is a fantastic book that has definitely been one of the best I've read in a long time. I'm now going to be hunting down more Susan Meissner books. She's an author that could easily make my favorite's list!! ( )