We’ve finally gotten to doing a proper review of Tom Bower’s Harry and Meghan book, Revenge.
Unlike many books we’ve read this year, we know a lot about what is going on in Revenge as we’ve spoken about it constantly. Also, this is one of the few books that we have where we have two copies. Initally, we bought the Apple books version when it came out. That same year, we got a physical copy which has been sitting on the shelf.
We also never got around to finishing Tom Bower’s Revenge when we got the Apple version. A few weeks ago, we checked the Apple book iteration there was an update which we did that allowed us to access the bonus content that was released after Her Majesty The Queen died.
This book review on Tom Bower’s Revenge will be done a little differently to other reviews we’ve done in the past.
Confirming The Facts
Tom Bower does a brilliant job in Revenge by confirming pieces of information that have previously been classified as rumours.
He also goes back and explains aspects of Meghan Markle’s life in particular that she doesn’t want people knowing. For example, that her mother used to smoke weed and that her home life as a baby was happy for a small time before her parents’ divorce.
Tom comes down hard on the fact that Doria, her mother, did not raise her and found being a parent difficult.
Doesn’t Include Things That Cannot Be Proven
Okay, we’ve done a post on this, but we wanted to cover it here. Tom Bower makes it clear in Revenge that if he cannot confirm something as true, he doesn’t put it in the book. For example, he doesn’t include where Doria was in the decade she was missing from Meghan’s life. He has addressed this as he had teased it before the book had come out.
Due to legal reasons, he couldn’t include Doria’s whereabouts but he does know where she was and for now, he cannot go public with the information. Though, he does bring up a rumour that was going around about Thomas Markle’s money troubles when Meghan was a child and states this was not true.
Reading Between The Lines
An aspect that is very apparent in Revenge that Tom Bower does very well is allow the reader to read between the lines of various statements he makes. For example, he gives the impression that Meghan allegedly had an affair with a castmember of Suits during her short-lived marriage to Trevor Engelson, but doesn’t go into specifics.
Rating Tom Bower’s Revenge
To end this review, we have explain why we gave Revenge four stars. We love Revenge, as it makes the reader, if they’ve been following the Sussex drama, feel like they’re not crazy. However, there are aspects of the book that aren’t correct like when Meghan had her first kiss with a boy named Joshua Silverstein. There is a rumour that has been around that she is older than she claims.
Tom Bower’s reporting says this is not the case and she is the age she is mentioned to be. We looked into the Joshua Silverstein claim and there were six men with the same name in California. The Joshua Silverstein Meghan would’ve known was born the same year as she was in 1981. Also, Bower doesn’t do anything to fix the mistake, at least in the book we have. Moreover, that is why we’re giving it four stars.
