The Confession of Katherine Howard

I am all for a lavish historical bodice-ripper, but Suzannah Dunn offers more originality than that. Her latest novel centres on the fourth wife of Henry VIII and the events which would lead to her ultimate execution by order of her husband, but Dunn's unique approach to this piece of history is to create a contemporary coming-of-age tale dressed in the trappings of the Tudor court.

It is told through the eyes of Catheryn Tilney, a callow young girl who grows up in the uncertain companionship of Katherine Howard, whose confident ways and burgeoning sexuality are to bring her more trouble than she can realise. Cat is the quiet heroine, while Kate, if not a villain, is never painted sympathetically by Dunn as she rises from black sheep of the Howard family to Queen of England. Yet they are both just girls, and the explorations of adolescence are - bar the creative use of a lemon for contraception - hardly different to those experienced by girls these days.

First love, first desire, the jealousies and loyalties within female friendship; these, says Dunn, are human emotions that were as real in Tudor times as they are today. And in making the girls' story contemporary, and therefore vividly empathetic, the poignant end becomes all the more heartbreaking.