Book Review – The Other Princess by Denny S. Bryce @AllisonandBusby

About the Book

A princess enslaved becomes goddaughter to a queen.

By the time she was seven years old, Aina had been born into life as an Egbado princess, witnessed the brutal killing of her entire family, and had been enslaved to a rival chieftain. With a death sentence hanging over her head, she would also face being bartered as an exotic trophy, renamed and presented to the distant Queen Victoria as a ‘gift’.

From traumatic beginnings, Sarah Forbes Bonetta’s will to survive led her to negotiate Her Majesty’s court, cultivate friends in high places and to flourish in a world far removed from her rural African upbringing.

Format: eARC (384 pages) Publisher: Allison and Busby
Publication date: 22nd Fabruary 2024 Genre: Historical Fiction

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My Review

The Other Princess is the story of Aina, an Egbado princess saved from a brutal death at the hands of a rival African tribe or a life of enslavement, and brought to England as a ‘gift’ to Queen Victoria, becoming the Queen’s goddaughter. Renamed Sarah Forbes Bonetta, she is taught English and educated with a view to becoming a Christian missionary. Her fear of being returned to Africa and her eagerness to remain close to the royal household means she is forced to conform to expectations of how she should behave. This often involves her taming her independent spirit and suppressing her cultural identity. One gets the sense of her being a kind of social experiment; the turning of a ‘savage’ into an acceptable member of English society. And one, moreover, who will be expected to engage in reinforcing British colonialism in Africa and converting its people to Christianity.

Told in the first person, Sarah comes across as resilient, brave and intelligent. She quickly masters English and becomes a gifted pianist. There’s a nice scene in which she surprises Queen Victoria with her musical skill. Sarah’s life becomes one of relative privilege, for instance she forms a close friendship with Princess Alice, one of Queen Victoria’s daughters. And, as any young girl might, she enjoys the fancy clothes and parties that come with life close to the royal household. But this privilege comes at the price of inability to make her own life choices. This is starkly demonstrated towards the end of the book when Sarah is forced by the Queen, overwhelmed with grief at the death of Prince Albert, to make a difficult decision between pursuing her heart or being consigned to a life of penury. If I have one criticism of the book, it’s that the pacing seemed slightly off with the final years of Sarah’s life – which were actually quite eventful – covered relatively quickly.

The Other Princess is a fascinating, eye-opening story of survival but one tinged with sadness.

I received a digital review copy courtesy of Allison and Busby via NetGalley.

In three words: Fascinating, enlightening, well-researched
Try something similar: The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho by Paterson Joseph

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About the Author

Denny S. Bryce’s previous novels include Wild Women and the Blues and In the Face of the Sun. Bryce is a professor on the MFA Creative Writing programme at Drexel University, a book critic for NPR, and has written for USA Today and Harper’s Bazaar. She traces her family back to Jamaica, Bermuda and Nigeria, the birthplace of Sarah Forbes Bonetta. Bryce lives in Savannah, Georgia. (Photo: Goodreads author page)

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