Left on the Shelf: The Queen's Tears by Elizabeth St. John

Barbara - 1619 - Hampton Court Palace

I prepare Queen Anna to stand before God as thunder crashes upon the roof tiles and lightning flashes across her bedchamber's vigilant Diana tapestries, huntress and hunted illuminated in death...

Julia - A rainy Monday morning in the present - The Cotswolds

Julia opened the front door to a rainstorm transforming Burford's narrow street into the Cotswold equivalent of a Ritz-Carlton spa shower...

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I am required to make it clear at the beginning of my reviews that I received this book for free from The Coffee Pot Book Club. I have not been paid for doing this and all opinions are my own. I am Bookshop.org affiliated, which means I earn a very small amount of money if you buy from there using my direct link. Although I include purchase links to Amazon, I am not affiliated with them. I include them to make it easy for you to navigate to them if you so wish.

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The Blurb

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 Tears weaves history, fiction, and family research across the centuries.

Readers of The Lydiard Chronicles will find old favourites—and a new heroine following in their footsteps.

My Review

This isn't the first book that I have read by the talented Elizabeth St. John, so when I was offered the opportunity to read this one for the blog tour I jumped at the chance. This was every bit as good as the other book I read (link below) and I enjoyed it very much indeed.

I adore a dual timeline in my reading. It shows great depth of skill in the author. To move back and forth in time this seamlessly demonstrates expertise in her writing.

The book is set in England, Ireland and France during both time periods and, as we read, we can anticipate how the two timelines will amalgamate at the end.

Barbara Villiers was a confidante of Queen Anna of Denmark. Upon her death, Barbara and two other trusted servants, the Hugsons, remove the Queen's jewels at her request. What follows is a hunt for the jewels in both the 17th century and the present-day narrative.

It is clear that the author knows her characters and the past time period in which she has set her book extremely well. Life in the royal court is expertly portrayed and the vulnerability of women is demonstrated very well in this book, alongside the wider political, religious and social history of the time.

The present day element of the book is also expertly depicted. Julia comes alive on the page as she researches a Van Dyck painting believed to be of Barbara. There are layers of revelation as we follow Julia's journey of discovery. She learns much about the painting but she equally learns much about herself and her feelings towards her ex-boyfriend Oliver, whom she comes across in her dealings with the auction house who are handling the painting.

I always enjoy learning about a historical figure who I do not know much about, and Barbara Villiers is one such person. I love it when a fictional account of someone's life leaves me wanting to find out more about them via reading some non-fiction about them. For me, this is a sign of a very well-written fiction book. If it leaves me wanting more, that says much about the quality of the book. I believe there will be a second book to add to this fictional account and I can't wait.

I highly recommend this book to lovers of historical fiction that has a contemporary narrative running alongside. Enjoy!

Book Details

ISBN: 979 8998165016

Publisher: Falcon Historical Press

Formats: e-book and paperback (currently available on Kindle Unlimited )

No. of Pages: 426 (paperback)

Purchase Links

Amazon UK

Amazon US

About the Author

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.

You can also find Elizabeth at:

My Other Blog Posts Featuring This Author

The Lady of the Tower