Should You Read The Windsor Knot by SJ Bennett?
A Book Review with NO spoilers
I want to admit something to you. This is the FIRST fiction book that I’ve read SINCE HIGH SCHOOL.
Now for those of you who don’t know, I’m 36 years old. Meaning I haven’t been a high schooler for about 18 years now. For someone who is known in all her circles as a book nerd, I know how bizarre that sounds to say that I haven’t read a fiction book since then. But you have to remember the balance between that and me discovering in college just how much of a psychology nerd I was as well.
When you make such discoveries, sometimes you go off the deep end! So I had to study psychology quite a bit in college and when I graduated, I was still studying it for my budding career in talent development as an instructional designer. And it just took off from there!
Trust me, when I say it wasn’t a “judgemental decision” so to speak. I didn’t look at fiction books like eww get away from me. But rather I just was super focused in accelerating in my career that if I was going to take time to read, it had to be career related.
Is that a balanced approach to reading? Absolutely not. And for years, I had good friends to side eye me and tell me, just read a fiction book! I’ve read online just how much many people actually hate reading psychology related books or nonfiction in general because fiction allows them to turn off their brain and explore new worlds to escape their current one.
And that makes sense!
But I would still rather read this nonfiction book about having more effective conflict resolution habits based on the latest research.
So this year, I finally had a moment that wasn’t necessarily spurred by any one trigger. But I decided, you know what, I’m going to read a fiction book.
Now being out the game for awhile here, I had nowhere to start and had no idea what fiction genres I even liked. My fuzzy memory of my last fiction reading was probably young adult fiction, but please don’t ask me to name a particular book because I genuinely don’t know.
This is when I leaned on my book loving friends for support. I asked for recommendations and one that stood out to me in particular was from a dear co-worker of mine, Hilary, that geneouraly brought me a whole recycled Target bag of her favorites from her library. (No, seriously she has an official embossed stamp for all of her books and a tracking system. It’s extremely impressive actually and also makes me feel like I need to step it up if I want to call myself a book nerd.)
If you have 11 minutes of wanting to be thoroughly amused by her great natural sense of humor and would love some fantasy book history, here’s a video of our whole discussion about fiction books.
Anyway, she was the one that suggested the Windsor Knot. “This just laugh out loud funny,” she starts off and goes on to describe it as her “palette cleanser” to read after reading a book that makes you cry or if you have a “book hangover” to help her move on into reading again.
This intrigued me as I’ve never heard of someone describe a book that way and that’s what ultimately won me over. So generously, Hilary allowed me to borrow it and now that I’ve finished it, I’m happy to share with you my thoughts about it.
The Windsor Knot Overview
(And no worries, I’ll never include spoilers in any of my fiction book reviews.)
This book follows 89 year old, Queen Elizabeth II. (There’s a reference to President Obama visiting the palace so that gives you an idea the time location.)
She holds events on a regular basis at Windsor Castle. But one night at her event, the Dine and Sleep, a person is found dead in their bedroom. Of course, her security staff is on it to investigate what happened, but the Queen secretly is quite an advanced investigator herself. No one knows except a few select people. So she decides to privately start looking into the situation herself to discover what truly happened.
The Windsor Knot Characters
I love the characters in this book. They all have their unique quirks and personalities. My favorite character is actually the second one that we follow the most besides the Queen and it’s Rozie Oshodi. Some of the ways the book describes Rozie as having a Nigerian background, tall and quite an impressive military background. I won’t share much more about her, but I love how she grew in confidence in this book and how much we learned about her. If I had to pinpoint my least favorite character(s), it’d be a tie between Gavin Humphreys and Yuri Peryrovski. I won’t share my reason why here to prevent spoilers, but definitely check out my spoilers article coming up, "Let’s Talk About The Windsor Knot” to find out why.
The Windsor Knot Plot and Pacing
I’m going to be honest, it felt slow at times. I did enjoy the mystery in the sense of discovering clues along with the Queen as much of the book is from her perspective, but there were times where I did feel like the description of things kind of went on and on. I would have to push myself to stay present and keep going so that I wouldn’t miss anything. But when clues of what was really going on showed up, I felt the pace quicken in those moments. That’s what made this book still interesting enough for me to keep going despite the small lulls at times.
As for the plot itself, I would have never guessed who was the real culprit. Every time that I thought I knew what happened and who did what, the book basically would shut it down. From that view, I think the book was a great mystery, because now that I finished it, I know for a fact that I would have never guessed what truly happened. BUT it does make me interested a bit in the sequel of this book as I wonder if any of the characters show up again in it to explore some of the issues that were mentioned in this book. There was one plot line in particular that I never read a resolve to that makes me the most interested in that sequel. If you read the book, you know EXACTLY what I’m referring to as well because I really thought we were about to find a solution for that problem that was brought up in the book as well.
The Windsor Knot Style
I did actually enjoy the style of this book. I understand now why Hilary told me this was her palette cleanser. Outside of the interest of a mystery, I did enjoy the subtle moments of humor sprinkled throughout the book. What I also thought was interested was how much the book reminds me of just my own experiences in working in HR when everything has to keep going, but YOU being on the inside know what’s really going on and need to navigate it without letting other people know that you know what’s really going on. Every HR person knows how that is to be on the inside but having to carry out duties as if they knew nothing. So I did feel seen reading this book!
Overall I did enjoy this book despite the slow moments. I’d be interested in reading the sequel. Of course, this is my first mystery book in a LONG time so I don’t have much to compare to, but I’m sure I continue in this journey of exploring fiction, I’ll eventually build up that experience level. So all that to say, yes, read the Windsor Knot. It’s worth the read.
Special thank you again to Hilary for the suggestion! I appreciate you helping me to kick off my fiction journey off right!
