Victoria Rebels

Victoria Rebels by Carolyn Meyer, 265 pages

This historical fiction is about Victoria, Queen of England through the later 1800’s. She reigned for almost 64 years. This teen novel chronicles her life from eight years old through the first few years of her reign in her early twenties. Victoria was raised to be a queen. Although at her birth, she was several steps away from the throne, all of the people who were between her and the throne were her father’s older brothers, none of whom had legitimate children and were unlikely to have any, so everyone knew that Victoria was likely to inherit. Her mother raised her strictly and rarely allowed her to do anything on her own, for fear that she would injure herself. In fact, Victoria slept in her mother’s bedroom until she became Queen, at age eighteen. On the advice of John Conroy, the man her mother most trusted, Victoria’s mother made many decisions during her upbringing that Victoria resented which resulted in a strained relationship, such that Victoria and her mother barely spoke by the time that she became Queen. The book is written completely from Victoria’s perspective and is based on her own journals written from the time she was thirteen. Teen fans of historical fiction, especially of this time period, will enjoy this book.