Kate: The Future Queen

Summary (from the publisher): Katie Nicholl, bestselling author and royal correspondent for The Mail on Sunday, gives an inside look into the life of the future Queen of England, Kate Middleton. Since becoming Duchess Catherine of Cambridge in 2011, Middleton has captivated royals fans around the world and now, Nicholl delivers the story of her early life, first romances, and love with Prince William. Nicholl will reveal new details on Middleton’s initiation into royal life and, of course, her first pregnancy.

Review: As yet another person that is fascinated by the commoner who grew up to marry Prince William, the future King of England, I was very excited to read this first biography that has been written on Catherine Middleton.

Although told in overwhelmingly positive overtones, avoiding any possible insults to the royal family, I did learn some interesting tidbits about Kate's life that I had not heard before. Although Kate has been portrayed in the medias as coming from a middle class home, her family is wealthy thanks to her mother's very successful party business. However, her mother Carole comes from very working class background; Kate's great-grandfather was a coal miner, as were several generations before him. However, Kate's father Michael comes from a fairly wealthy family and can trace his family to royalty. In fact, through her father's lineage, "William and Kate are in fact fourteenth cousins once removed" (154).

I did learn a good bit about Kate's childhood that I had never read before. For example, I had no idea that the Middleton family lived for some time in the Middle East, in Jordan. Kate's preschool was very multicultural, with children from all over the world and she learned Arabic and English and ate Jordanian food at school. It was also interesting to hear how close the Middleton family is and about Kate's school experiences growing up, which were not all positive.

It was also interesting to learn more about the security and media frenzy with which both Kate and her family now must live, thanks to Kate's marriage into royalty. Before their marriage, because William was going to be visiting Kate frequently, "panic buttons linked to the local police station were installed" in her apartment (136). Kate is accompanied everywhere by protection officers and drives a bomb proof car. This must be a remarkable transformation from someone who grew up as an ordinary citizen, and now is surrounded at all times by media attention. Their engagement interview alone was "watched by a record 3 billion people across the world" (213).

I was disappointed at relatively how little detail was shared in this book, likely be design. Only the first couple chapters dealt with her family history and childhood, and the bulk of the book focused on William and Kate's courtship and marriage, much of which has already been discussed at length in the media. In addition, little is conveyed about Kate's siblings' lives at all, which I would have found interesting to learn more about. However, this is a delicate book to write, since the royal family is fiercely private.

Stars: 3.5