Category: Historical Fiction

The Last to See Me by M. Dressler

The Last to See Me by M. Dressler

The Last to See Me is a fascinating story set in a world where ghosts are real and if they’re hanging around, they can bring down property values.

So, if you find you have an unruly poltergeist in your closet, you call a hunter to put them into the “eternal sleep.”

The tale is told from Emma, a ghost’s, point of view.

“My hearing is so much finer than when I walked alive and with a heartbeat. It’s something I’ve had a century to ponder: how much does the beating heart of one creature drown out the heart of another?” pg 6

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I found this story to be absolutely captivating.

“At the turn of the millennium, when the hunts began, I was as scared as any ghost could be. But fear, in the end, does a body no good. If you let yourself be afraid of what can kill you, it weakens you. So you can’t let yourself be afraid.” pg 21.

Inbetween Emma’s fight to remain alive, in a manner of speaking, we get to learn about her life before her death. So, there’s a bit of historical fiction thrown in the mix.

I think M. Dressler has written a fantastic ghost story.

“But I can tell you that the reason you felt something was hiding under your bed, all those years ago, is precisely because it was. It just knew better than to show itself to you.” pg 102

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I found myself cheering for Emma, even when the story takes a few surprisingly dark turns.

“But understand and hear me, my friend. Nothing dead, no matter how interesting or difficult, is worth keeping.” pg 129.

Also, I was amazed at how Dressler managed to weave various elements of the story into its conclusion.

Take your time and read carefully, I think you’ll be as delighted with this tale as I was.

Highly recommended for those who like not-so-scary stories or slightly spooky historical fiction.

Thanks for reading!

The Sun King Conspiracy by Yves Jégo

The Sun King Conspiracy by Yves Jégo

A historical fiction about a French King, his mistress, his minister, his mother, an aspiring actor with a secret past and a secret society with hidden knowledge that could change the world.

“A chief minister is dying, yet people are interested only in counting the supporters and detractors of an entertainer…” pg 9, ebook.

Unfortunately, I didn’t really care for The Sun King Conspiracy.

I felt like it was trying to be a mystery like The Da Vinci Code with the complexity of an epic historical fiction. It didn’t quite reach either pinnacle.

“According to Colbert’s report, the murderers took nothing else of any worth from my apartments. From this, I deduce that their only concern was to seize those papers.” pg 36, ebook.

It was probably just me, but I kept getting the ministers and their roles confused. Also, their alliances and reasons why they hated each other never really made sense to me.

“The truth is,” said the scholar with a sad smile, “that this question of succession seems to be the only matter that interests anyone in Paris, when the real subject that ought to occupy us, the only one worthy of any interest, is entirely different: it concerns the stability of the Kingdom.” pg 142, ebook.

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It felt like there were nuances to the court relationships that were never explicitly stated.

Maybe the author assumed a familiarity with the court of the Sun King that I don’t possess.

The whole secret society part of this story was just flat. I felt like I’d read the same conspiracy in half a dozen other books.

“I am more aware of this than anyone else. I have paid so dearly for it that my belief in its ultimate success is perhaps the only thing that still keeps me alive…” pg 229, ebook.

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I didn’t connect with any of the cast of characters either. They were so cookie cutter.

Here’s hoping I like the next read more. 🙂

Thanks for reading!

A Touch of Stardust by Kate Alcott

A Touch of Stardust by Kate Alcott

A girl from Indiana goes to Hollywood and ends up taking care of Hollywood royalty in A Touch of Stardust.

The reader gets a behind the scenes look at the making of Gone With the Wind and the private, slightly dysfunctional lives of Carol Lombard and Clarke Gable.

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It was fun learning about what went into the creation of Gone With the Wind. Those parts of the book sort of read like a Hollywood-fan magazine, but better written.

The dialogue in this book is snappy and smart, like a Bogie and Bacall film.

I loved the heroine and how she pulled herself up by the bootstraps to make it in Hollywood at a time when very few women did.

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Overall, it’s a great story. I absolutely loved this book up until the ending which I hated.

We discussed this read in my book club and some folks liked the ambiguous feel of the ending. I was not one of those.

Recommended for readers who can handle an ending that might make them say: “Huh?” or “No!”

Thanks for reading!

Speakeasy by Alisa Smith

Speakeasy by Alisa Smith

Lena Stillman is a codebreaker during World War II. But she hasn’t always been a hero.

During the depression, she robbed banks with Bill Bagley and the Clockwork Gang.

What is she going to do now that the past seems to have caught up with her?

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Speakeasy had some interesting elements, but the story suffered from a back and forth narrative and flat characters.

“I spread my papers out in front of me, and at first they all looked the same: a random mix of roman letters divided always into five characters with a space between each set, so no word lengths were revealed. I was searching for any repetitions.” loc 15, ebook.

The story is told from Lena’s perspective and diary entries of one of the members of her old gang.

“Bill Bagley was being punished because he had failed at something for which he possessed genius.” loc 80, ebook.

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The back-and-forth storytelling was jarring. I liked the stories separately, but together, it didn’t really work.

They interrupted the flow of each other. I think it might have fit together more smoothly in a Part I/Part II presentation rather than interspersed.

I think Bill Bagley, one of the central characters, didn’t have the depth required to pull off this story.

He’s supposed to be this charismatic, brilliant criminal who inspires the men to risk their lives again and again, and also captures Lena’s heart.

Bagley has some failings, but, initially, there must have been something to him to draw the gang together.

Instead, from the start, he comes off as a volatile jerk.

We meet Bagley as he’s denying the parentage of a child who looks just like him: “This un ain’t mine and don’t tell me again that it is,” he said, thrusting the baby back to a lady with burning red cheeks.” loc 80, ebook.

He doesn’t improve from there.

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“I returned from a visit with Bill, received a threatening note from him, and now this. He must have a copy of it and wanted to hold it over my head.” loc 741, ebook.

I guess I just never understood what Lena saw in him.

Also, for a genius code breaker, she doesn’t seem to be able to puzzle out the people around her very well.

“My morals were just not like other people’s, because unlike the somnolent majority I saw society’s problems. In my youth I had been misguided, and picked the wrong way of lashing out against an unfair system. But I had left the gang behind, and found a greater ease in my soul.” loc 1781, ebook.

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There’s a twist that occurs during Lena’s code breaking era that I saw coming from miles away. And I’m not particularly good at calling plot twists.

My favorite part of this book were the gang-era years. My heart was in my throat during most of those chapters.

Unfortunately, it couldn’t carry the rest of this novel.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a free digital copy of this book.

Thanks for reading!

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

A beautiful, magic-tinged tale of an aging couple, the bleak Alaskan wilderness and a child who appears one day in the wood.

Mabel and Jack always wanted a child, but after suffering a miscarriage, they begin to lose hope of ever conceiving. Mabel suffers in female society without a child of her own.

She begs Jack to take her to Alaska for a fresh start. He agrees. But it doesn’t work.

The weather is dark and freezing. The ground is hard and takes more effort than Jack can give. They aren’t thriving.

“All her life she had believed in something more, in the mystery that shape-shifted at the edge of her senses. It was the flutter of moth wings on glass and the promise of river nymphs in the dappled creek beds. … Mabel could not remember the last time she caught such a flicker.” pg 6, ebook.

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Then, out of the blue, a child magically appears during a snow storm.

She is so light on her feet and silent, Jack and Mabel don’t at first believe their eyes. The child travels with a fox and barely leaves prints to follow on the snow.

“What did he expect to find? A fairy-tale beast that holds young girls captive in a mountain cave? … Or nothing at all, no child, no tracks, no door, only insanity bared in the untouched snow? That is perhaps what he feared the most, that he would discover he had followed nothing more than an illusion.” pg 72, ebook.

Mabel remembers a Russian fairy tale from her childhood, of a couple who builds a girl out of snow. In the story within the story, the girl becomes real.

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Could Jack and Mabel have created the child they have always dreamed of?

“I am sorry to say no matter which version, the story ends badly. The little snow girl comes and goes with winter, but in the end she always melts.” pg 96, ebook.

How will Jack and Mabel’s story end?

Recommended for fans of historical fiction and tales that contain magical realism.

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“In my old age, I see that life itself is often more fantastic and terrible than the stories we believed as children, and that perhaps there is no harm in finding magic among the trees.” pg 189, ebook.

I thought The Snow Child was beautiful and well-told. Highly recommended.

I don’t think The Snow Child has been made into a film, yet, but it has been staged as a musical play.

Thanks for reading!

People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks

People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks

The story of an extraordinary book and the people who surround it.

And I did not enjoy it.

My reaction to this one was a huge surprise. I adored Geraldine Brook’s Year of Wonders and I thought this would be an easy hit for me.

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I think the problem is fairly simple- never connected with the main character. I loved Anna from Year of Wonders. I couldn’t stand Hanna.

The small details of her work that she found so absorbing, I didn’t enjoy.

I didn’t like how she treated people sometimes. I thought she seemed rather arrogant.

I also didn’t like how the timelines bounced around from character to character. I was listening to People of the Book as an audiobook. Without being able to look back and check, I found myself getting confused when I stopped in the middle of a passage and picked it up again after a work day.

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Brook’s writing is just fine. Again, I can’t believe I didn’t like this.

Highly recommend Year of Wonders. I give this a solid pass.

Thanks for reading!

Blood & Beauty: The Borgias by Sarah Dunant

Blood & Beauty: The Borgias by Sarah Dunant

A historical fiction novel about one of the most politically savvy families of all time.

Oh, the Borgias. What an extraordinary family and what a story.

Painting by John Collier, “A glass of wine with Caesar Borgia”

Just when you think that things couldn’t become more scandalous, they do.

A Pope with a family? Check. Forbidden attraction between siblings? Check. Poisonings and intrigue and, dare I say, murder?

The attraction of this story is not just the crazy Borgias, it’s also Rome itself.

All roads lead to it, the center of power in Europe for centuries. One never really “rules” Rome, you just ride your wave of popularity until it crashes.

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This city was the perfect backdrop to showcase the political acumen of Alexander VI, Cesare Borgias, and, eventually, Lucrezia Borgias.

Blood & Beauty contains political as well as personal drama, the shifting alliances of kings, queens, and city-states, and some very unique family dynamics.

Sarah Dunant ranks among my favorite historical fiction authors. Her stories are well-researched and never dull.

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Somehow, she distills the legend to find the human being within.

If you enjoy historical fiction about the Renaissance and Rome, it doesn’t get much better than this.

Thanks for reading!

Miss Burma by Charmaine Craig

Miss Burma by Charmaine Craig

A layered and subtle historical fiction about a family in Burma and how they make it through all sorts of terrible things that happen there.

This is an incredibly dark book based on the true family history of Charmaine Craig. My book club had a tough time discussing it.

“Your problem is that you believe in right and wrong. Don’t you know evil will find you no matter what?” pg 11.

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First of all, the introductory portion doesn’t make sense until the last half of the book. The pacing is glacially slow. A few of our club members couldn’t make it through the first couple of chapters.

Secondly, the constant warring and torture of innocents by the conquering forces is really difficult to read.

“We welcomed them because we’d been persecuted by the Burmans for centuries, we’d been their slaves – our villages perpetually attacked, our people perpetually preyed upon, stripped of everything from our clothing to our lives.” pg 37.

It is an important history, certainly, but the darkness of it made me feel sick.

A third problem club members had with Miss Burma is it feels disjointed.

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At first, readers thought Khin and Benny were the focus of the book. But then, the point of view drifted around to Louisa, their beautiful daughter, and her story took over.

We must find a way to rejoice in our circumstances. We must find a way to do more than endure.” pg 145

Basically, the Karen are an ethnic minority in Burma, now Myanmar. For centuries, the Karen have been enslaved by the Burmese. The underlying story is about how the Karen tried to unite against the ruling government to create a federation.

“Our modesty that runs so deep it is almost self-annihilating. But now.. our relative invisibility strikes me as very sad. … If you stand for a moment behind their eyes- behind the eyes of anyone for whom modesty is not an ultimate virtue- we appear to value our lives less than they do.” pg 168

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Against this background, the family of Khin and Benny tries to survive and do what they believe is right.

This story is full of flawed characters and whole passages where most of the action takes place in people’s minds.

There is fairly graphic torture, rape and violence. If any of those are triggers for you, beware.

Recommended for patient readers and those who can handle a very dark history. The book club certainly learned a lot about Burma from this book. And bullets still fly in Myanmar today.

Thanks for reading!

Romancing Miss Brontë by Juliet Gael

Romancing Miss Brontë by Juliet Gael

Warning: minor spoilers ahead if you don’t know the history of the Brontë family. Read with caution.

Romancing Miss Bronte is a disappointing historical fiction about Charlotte Brontë, her sisters Emily and Ann, and how they came from obscurity to write some of the most enduring fiction the West has known.

The first part of this story was the best. The reader gets a unique glimpse into the minds of the Brontës, what their lives were probably like and how unfortunate their brother’s existence turned out to be.

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I loved hearing Juliet Gael’s vision of their character and personality quirks.

The second half of the book, focused primarily on Charlotte and her relationship with Arthur, was a drag.

Up until that point, the women were surprisingly self sufficient, considering the times in which they lived. Yes, they coddled their alcoholic and opium-addicted brother. Yes, they indulged the whims of their ailing father, but for the most part, they acted how they pleased.

Once Arthur enters her life, Charlotte centers every action around him. He tells her who she can write. He controls their social schedule.

The book enters a repetitive loop: Charlotte does something Arthur doesn’t like, he reprimands her, she writes her friend a letter about how annoying it is but she simply adores her husband so it’s ok… and repeat.

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This was probably the reality of her situation but it sucked. I can’t imagine that I would have been happy living like that. I don’t believe she was either.

The cringe-inducing letters Gael describes in the story actually exist. I also think that if I was a sensitive and reclusive person like Charlotte Brontë, having my personal letters published after my death would be a nightmare situation.

Charlotte and her sisters were forced to live a sub-par existence because they were women.

Traditional roles for women left so little room for living. It’s astonishing that the Brontës were able to write anything at all, when you consider when they lived and the disadvantages to their station.

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They were poor, lived in the middle of nowhere and had no one they could rely on except themselves.

Add to the mix a dose of religious guilt and social expectations… again, the world is fortunate to have their stories.

I suggest reading Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights instead of this.

Thanks for reading!