I am really interested in Queen Victoria, but it’s hard to find historical fiction on her (I only know of two novels that are about Queen Victoria, including this one). This time around in my reading of The Royal Diaries series (one of my absolute favourite childhood series, though I never managed to read ALL of them when I was a kid), the focus is on Queen Victoria from England. Maybe if you have a young relative (I think I would have enjoyed this more if I was of the target audience but there you go) that you need to buy something for and this comes in a set then buy it but otherwise I wouldn't because there are much better options out there. The historical afterword was more interesting than the book itself which is slightly concerning but even that had an unnecessary bit which tried to justify the British Empire as a good thing while also acknowledging all of the murder and colonisation? Anyway yeah that was a bit icky and also the book wasn't that good. Victoria was quite annoying and she didn't seem to have many opinions and thus every opinion she did have had to be repeated way too many times.

It was a middle grade, but even then it wasn't anything special and I have read much better books of the same age category that didn't rely on 'ooooh its a princess but #relatable' as its premise. It was literally just a diary about a young, posh girl's life and that was the entire premise. This was fast paced without being engaging, namely because there was no plot. 2 stars I'm so glad I finally finished this

Victoria by Anna Kirwan