Blog tour ~ guest post: The Queen’s Necklace by Adrienne Chinn

I am delighted to have Adrienne as a guest today ~ thanks to Rachel’s Random Resources for organizing.

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Genre: Dual timeline historical mystery

Publication Date: September 25, 2025

Publisher: One More Chapter/Harper Collins

Estimated Page Count: 384

Standalone Novel

Author Content Warning: Drugs, swear words, Anne Boleyn’s execution

Why The Queen’s Necklace is a Contemporary Mystery

Near contemporary posthumous portrait of Anne Boleyn at Hever Castle, c. 1550

Historical fiction readers be warned! The Queen’s Necklace is a timeslip novel, with a contemporary mystery set in current day Los Angeles and London rubbing up against the 16^th century story of Anne and Mary Boleyn. It you’re looking for a Tudor romance or traditional historical Tudor fiction, you may well be disappointed. Fundamentally, The Queen’s Necklace is a contemporary story with an historic Tudor back story.

So, why did I choose to write The Queen’s Necklace this way, given that I do love writing novels set in historical periods (my Three Fry Sisters novels are all set squarely in the early 20^th century), and romances (The Lost Letter from Morocco and The English Wife – although both are timeslip novels as well)?

When I decided to weave a story around Anne Boleyn’s iconic ‘B’ necklace, which many portraits of her show her wearing, I thought that the best way to create mystery and suspense around the necklace would be to have it ‘found’ by a contemporary character. This would then provide me with the perfect excuse to intertwine a fresh, new story with one which I could develop around an historic fictional story featuring the two Boleyn sisters and the ‘B’ necklace. While the historic story is fictional, I’ve been very careful to place the sisters in places they are known to have been through historic documents and letters.

What kind of contemporary character could give me the most flexibility with these two strands? I remembered once watching the movie version of John Fowles’s novel, The French Lieutenant’s Woman, where the screenwriter Harold Pinter used the device of having contemporary actors, Anna and Mike, play the roles of the Victorian characters Sarah and Charles. I thought, what if I had a successful Hollywood actress – Bryher Finch – as the central character in the contemporary story – someone famous like Anne Boleyn was famous?

Megan Fox. BG023/ Bauer-Griffin/ Getty

What if I had Bryher’s very public life implode when a sex tape scandal sends her to England to escape the collapse of both her marriage and her Hollywood career, and her name and reputation being dragged through the mud, the way that Anne Boleyn’s had been? A very public fall from grace just as Anne’s had been.

What if, when she’s in England, Bryher discovers that she is descended from Anne’s sister, Mary Boleyn? Then, what if, quite accidentally, Bryher discovers a ‘B’ necklace which she believes to be a copy in her distant cousin’s house where she’s staying while she films a Tudor mini-series in which she plays Anne Boleyn?

(Image credit: BBC/Playground Entertainment/Nick Briggs)

What if I made Bryher someone who is self-centered and single-minded? Someone who craves attention and can be callous in her desire for ‘stardom’? Someone who has a difficult relationship with a sister? Someone who has much growth to do to become a better person, and have this reflected in Anne and Mary Boleyn’s story?

Being a great fan of historical fiction, I liked the idea of writing an historical story based around the rivalry between elder sister, the beautiful Mary Bolyen, and younger sister, the clever Anne Boleyn (I am aware there is debate as to which sister was elder, but as I explain in the book’s notes, I chose to follow the view that Mary was the elder sister), using the ‘B’ necklace as a symbol of their heritage, and which, over the course of their story, changes hands from one to the other several times. We see Anne being single-minded and callous in her treatment of others (her sister Mary and Queen Katherine of Aragon in particular) in her determination to become Henry VIII’s queen.

In The Queen’s Necklace, the historical story is one family and sisters and pride, rather than it being a reiteration of the familiar Henry VIII/Anne Boleyn love story. We see Anne realise, too late, the place her own self-centeredness and pride has had in her downfall, though, of course, her terrible fate still resonates with pathos even after centuries. Anne is a victim of her sex and her century, just as Bryher is, although I wanted Bryher to find a way to escape and survive her public persecution. Bryher comes out the other side of her scandal having grown in empathy and understands that she doesn’t need the validation of a fickle public to know her own worth.

Finally, I had to ensure the ‘B’ necklace – the iconic necklace that plays a pivotal role in both stories — ends up in a place where it still remains one of history’s mysteries.

Book blurb:

The most famous necklace in the world has finally been found…

Bryher Finch’s life isn’t just a disaster, it’s a catastrophe, until a chance invitation to chart her family tree changes everything. As Bryher uncovers the ancestry she never knew about, she stumbles on the find of the century – Anne Boleyn’s ‘B’ necklace, as enigmatic as Henry VIII’s most notorious Queen herself.

But Bryher isn’t the only one who wants the necklace…

Purchase Links

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-queens-necklace-adrienne-chinn/1146772161

https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-queens-necklace/adrienne-chinn/9780008643829

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=IWv50AEACAAJ&source=gbs_book_other_versions

https://www.whsmith.co.uk/Product/Adrienne-Chinn/The-Queens-Necklace/15620348

Author Bio –

Adrienne Chinn was born in Grand Falls, Newfoundland, grew up in Quebec, and eventually made her way to London, England after a career as a journalist. In England she worked as a TV and film researcher before embarking on a career as an interior designer, lecturer, and writer. When not up a ladder or at the computer writing, she often can be found rummaging through flea markets or haggling in the Marrakech souk. Her debut novel, The Lost Letter, was published in 2019. Her second novel, the international bestseller, The English Wife, was published in 2020. Her third novel, Love in a Time of War, the first in a series of four books in The Three Fry Sisters series, was published in 2022. The second book in the series, The Paris Sister, was published in 2023, and the third book, In the Shadow of War, was published in March 2024. Her next book, an historical timeslip novel, The Queen’s Necklace, will be published in September 2025, followed by the fourth book in The Three Fry Sisters series, set during WWII, in 2026.

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