Chalice (Bilyeau) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
( A Top Pick.) The novel is riveting, and provides fascinating insight into the lives of displaced nuns and priests during the tumultuous Tudor period. Bilyeau creates fully realized characters, with complex actions and emotions, driving the machinations of these historic personages.
RT Book Reviews


English history buffs and mystery fans alike will revel in Nancy Bilyeau's richly detailed sequel to The Crown.
Parade


I loved the story, the characters, and the rich detail of the novel, making you feel you are there with Joanna on every page. So much emotion and drama- as well as facts to keep you riveted from the first page. And surprise twists for even the most hard to please mystery fans! I loved it
Bonnie Sommerville - De Jour magazine


Bilyeau sends her plucky former novice back into the intrigue-laden court of Henry VIII.
Entertainment Weekly


Bilyeau paints a moving portrait of Catholicism during the Reformation and of reclusive, spiritual people adjusting to the world outside the cloister. This intriguing and suspenseful historical novel pairs well with C. J. Sansom’s Dissolution (2003) and has the insightful feminine perspective of Brenda Rickman Vantrease’s The Heretic’s Wife (2010).
Booklist


A historical novel set during the time of Henry VIII. It opens in Canterbury in 1528, when the heroine, Joanna Stafford, is only 17 and her mother, worried about her daughter's health, pretends to take her to benefit from healing waters there. In fact, it is her mother's desire to have her daughter meet a woman with the gift of prophecy, a woman who is the first to see the role Joanna is destined to play in the future of the ongoing conflict between the crown and the cross.... [S]he pays attention to the first of what will be three seers who reveal, in progressive parts, her ultimate destiny....  Joanna's interest in weaving tapestries is an appropriate analogy for this layered book of historical suspense.
Kirkus Reviews