Category Archives: Historical Fiction

All the historical fiction genre book reviews.

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Review: The Tutor’s Daughter by Julie Klassen

Title: The Tutor’s Daughter
Author: Juile Klassen
Pages: 412 pages paperback, 416 ebook
Rating: ★★★★

I’ve been a fan of Klassen for a couple years. She’s able to write Regency romance extremely well. Despite a slow start, The Tutor’s Daughter fits right in with the style and sweetness of Klassen’s previous novels.

Emma Smallwood and her father travel to Cornwall set to tutor the two younger brothers of students Mr. Smallwood once had at his school. They hardly get off on the right foot, arriving somewhat unexpectedly. Emma had been friends with Phillip Weston and tormented by his older brother Henry when they were boys at her father’s school, and she’s both anxious and nervous to see how living in the same home goes.

Right from the beginning, it’s easy to tell there are a couple secrets being kept. Odd things keep happening and no one seems to have the right explanation for them. I will say I guessed one of the secrets early on, but it didn’t take away from my enjoyment of the book.

The first third of the novel moved a little too slowly for my tastes, but the last third definitely helped make up for that. There’s action and accusations and it’s wonderful.

Klassen once again proves her fantastic ability to write a 19th century English romance. The language she uses is perfect, and she’s able to paint the world as it was. The Tutor’s Daughter has just the right amount of mystery and romance, plus it doesn’t over do it when it comes to the religious discussions. I know this genre isn’t for everyone, but for lovers of Regency romances, Klassen is an author to add to your bookshelves.

If The Tutor’s Daughter sounds like your kind of book, you can purchase it here:
Amazon
Audible
Barnes and Noble
IndieBound

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Review: The Forgotten Queen by D.L. Bogdan

Title: The Forgotten Queen
Author: D. L. Bogdan
Pages: 318 pages paperback, 384 ebook
Rating: ★★★★

One of my favorite things about reading historical fiction is getting to discover something or someone from the past. In the case of The Forgotten Queen, I get to do both.

Margaret is the older sister of King Henry VIII. She is married to James, King of Scotland in order to hopefully bring peace between the two countries. She’s told from the very beginning that peace is her job as queen. She holds on to that tightly, even when things get tough.

Margaret knows from an early age that her choices are not truly her own. Because she is a woman, her marriage is a bargaining tool. She can never rule in her own right, and her opinions on anything other than dresses are generally not looked upon as valuable. She fights back in her own way, choosing her second and third husbands and trying to do what is right for Scotland through her son.

Bogdan wrote a perfectly flawed character. Margaret is in love with the idea of love and that clouds her judgment at times. She loves a little too much, but that is both a strength and a weakness. She makes decisions having the best intentions at heart, even though she doesn’t always think her actions through. I loved reading a character, even one based on fact, that is a completely human character. It makes her come alive.

The true sign, to me, of a great historical fiction novel, is one that makes me want to learn more after the last page has been read. The Forgotten Queen was one of those books. As soon as I had finished reading, I was looking up more information. I had known of Margaret before reading, but after finishing the novel, I feel like I know her a little bit more.

This is definitely a book for anyone interested in the other members of the Tudor family. There were a couple times when the tone of the novel felt a little off, but that doesn’t get in the way of enjoying the story. This look into the life of Margaret is a wonderful read and a great historical fiction novel.

If The Forgotten Queen sounds like your kind of novel, you can purchase it here:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
IndieBound

Thank you to Kensington and NetGalley for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

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Review: The Bloodletter’s Daughter by Linda Lafferty

Title: The Bloodletter’s Daughter
Author: Linda Lafferty
Pages: 512 pages hardcover, 513 ebook
Rating: ★★★★★

I had never heard of Marketa Pichlerova before reading this book. And to be honest, if I didn’t look up the real history behind this book, I probably would have thought it too dramatic to be true. That’s why I think I loved this book so much. The basic story behind it is true. Marketa was real. The main parts of this story are things that actually happened. And man, is it a story.

Marketa is a bathmaiden, which is basically saying she will be a classy prostitute. She longs to study and practice medicine, even though she is a woman and can’t have that dream. She works in her mother’s bathhouse and occasionally assists her father in his bloodletting procedures. I felt so much for her. Because her mother is a bathmaiden, that’s really all she can hope for in her future. She was born with the ultimate curse–being a woman. She just wants to do more than what is expected of her. She wants to follow her dreams and learn more of medicine and be able to practice.

When she finally gets her first “patient” in the son of the king, I can see why her better judgment becomes clouded. She’s finally getting the chance to do what she wants, even if she doesn’t get the credit. She gets to use her knowledge of the human body to help someone, even if the man she is helping is too far gone to really feel any benefits.

I feel bad for Don Julius, in a way. Granted, I don’t feel bad enough for me to find him redeeming in any way, but not everything is his fault. Yes, he is mad and insane, but those around him indulge him instead of really trying to help him. Fear of falling out of the king’s good graces leads Julius’ companions to turn a blind eye to his behavior instead of stopping it. It is in that way I feel bad for him. Who knows how things would have turned out had Julius been treated the way he deserved instead of being treated with kid gloves.

The story itself is amazing. It reads like a soap opera, but is based in fact. That is what I find fascinating. Those few years the book described really happened. It’s hard to wrap my head around it and I really want to know more.

The Bloodletter’s Daughter is a fascinating read that transports you back in time and throws you right into the middle of the town. The story is brilliantly written and makes it nearly impossible to put the book down. This is a must-read book.

If The Bloodletter’s Daughter sounds like your kind of book, you can purchase it here:
Amazon
Audible
Barnes and Noble
IndieBound

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Blackberry Winter by Sarah Jio

I haven’t read anything of Jio’s before. Blackberry Winter was a Kindle Daily Deal and the description sounded interesting. At worst, I’d be out three dollars. At best, I’d find one of those gems that sneak up on you. Blackberry Winter is definitely a gem.

Blackberry Winter weaves together two different tales of struggles and loss. Vera heads to work one evening and when she leaves there is snow blanketing the ground and her son is gone. Claire’s life is in pieces and it takes a snow storm to put her on the path to fixing herself. The stories are beautifully interwoven, constantly pulling at my heart and never giving a moment of rest.

I did figure out early on most of how the characters are connected. I initially thought that knowing the big mystery would take me out of the novel. It didn’t at all. I still needed to know how things got from point A to point B and all the little pieces in the middle.

Vera’s story had me in tears. The pain she went through is something no mother should ever have to go through. And to have it set in 1933, when times were dire or times were fantastic, all depending on how much money there was to your name. She worked hard to make life as good as she could for her son, and it was so easy to feel the love she had for him.

Claire is going through her own heartache. Her world has been broken to bits and she’s not sure how she’s supposed to put it back together. When a May snowstorm hits and she comes the story of Vera and Daniel Ray, something in her compels her to dig the truth out. She needs to find out how Vera’s story ends and I loved going on that journey with her.

Sarah Jio is an author that hadn’t been on my radar before. But after reading Blackberry Winter, I will definitely be reading more of her writings. She wove a breathtaking story through these pages and had me tearing up at the end. This is a book that needs to be read.

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Sacrifice by Cayla Kluver

I’m not really sure how I feel about Sacrifice. Was it a good book? Yes. Was it engaging? Yes. But things were missing, and I didn’t find myself enjoying Sacrifice as much as I had hoped.

First, the romance. In the previous two books, I felt it. I was swooning as much as Alera was. In Sacrifice, I didn’t feel it. Sure, Kluver told me about how amazing Narian was and how sweet, but she didn’t show me like she did in the previous books. I feel like there needs to be more than kissing to make me fall in love, and that’s really all I got from Alera and Narian’s romance. There was some swooning in this book, but it didn’t last as long as I wished it would.

I could have handled a flat romance, if the rest of the story was spectacular. Unfortunately, it felt like there was a lot of build up to something that wasn’t fully explained. I wanted to know more about that last battle. I wanted to know how things went down. I felt like 85% of the book was leading up to this epic battle, and then nothing. There was summary, but nothing of the actual action.

I guess that’s how I feel about the entire novel, though. Legend and Allegiance were fantastic build up to Sacrifice, while fell short of what I was expecting. It felt like more of a middle novel, lots of little things happened, and one or two large things happened, but it didn’t feel like its own novel. Plus, the ending wrapped up a little too fast. I would have loved having the last 10% of the novel expanded.

Sacrifice wasn’t a bad book, but it didn’t live up to the caliber the first two novels had set. It’s a fine novel, but I wanted something more and it just wasn’t there.

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The Paris Wife by Paula McLain

I’m not sure I have enough words to adequately express how much this book moved me. Usually, a book that feels slow to start and has slightly confusing chapters doesn’t affect me this much, but The Paris Wife slowly tore me to pieces with its heart and pain, and at the very end, I was reading through tears.

The Paris Wife tells the story of Ernest Hemingway’s first wife, Hadley, and the beginnings of his career. No one seems especially thrilled at the start of their relationship, but they were in love. It was easy to see, even through the very end. And I think that’s why it hurt so much at the end. It wasn’t hatred that I felt, reading those last chapters. It was Hadley’s love; so much love that she knew she had to let it go, or it would destroy them more than it had already.

It’s easy to see the Ernest Hadley fell in love with. But as he gained success, he began to lose himself to his work, and in turn, losing his wife and family. It’s absolutely heartbreaking to read, because as much as you want it to turn out, you know it doesn’t. Each little piece of love and adoration I read was like another tiny needle poking me; simply because I knew their happiness wouldn’t last forever.

The novel does start of a little slow, and some of the vacation chapters where lots of people are mentioned got a little confusing, but all of that pales in comparison to how fantastic the rest of the novel is. It will make you feel, it will hurt, and the ending breaks your heart, but it is such a fantastic, amazing, wonderful, splendid novel that you can’t help but keep reading. This has easily become a must read book, and one of the best books I’ve ever read.

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The Kingmaker’s Daughter by Philippa Gregory

Here’s the thing. I love history. A lot. I love when Philippa Gregory novels. A lot. The fact that her books are historical novels makes me nearly giddy. I might love Gregory’s novels to the point I almost hate them just a little bit, too. The Kingmaker’s Daughter was no exception.

The Kingmaker’s Daughter is the story of Anne Neville and her road to becoming queen. It starts when she is 8 years old and ends when she is 28. She starts off as her father’s pawn, a way to move higher in importance by marrying her off to the best offer. Her father uses her to try and win back his power over the king after King Edward’s (of the York side) wife and her family steal his influence away. She is married to Prince Edward of the Lancaster side as a way to buy a tie to the kingship. After her husband dies and the Lancaster line is officially ended, she loses nearly all her potential power and influence.

It is at this moment she starts to make choices for herself. She knows there are very few options to gain independence for herself, so she takes the next best road and marries someone she cares a great deal for, and eventually loves. Richard. I never doubted for a second that they came to love each other. To begin with, it almost feels as though the marriage is one of purpose. She wants to leave the house of her sister and brother-in-law, and Richard wants access to the land, wealth, and power her name brings. But by the end of the novel, there was love there.

The princes in the tower are touched upon, and yet nothing is definitively said about their fate. I like that Gregory doesn’t try to take a side. She keeps that mystery going and I appreciate that.

In the past 3 novels, I had come to form an opinion of Anne Neville and it wasn’t the greatest. Even though I saw her as a product of those around her, I wasn’t overly fond of her character in the last three books. However, when it’s finally her turn to tell the story, I fell in love with her and started to despise characters I had loved previously.

This is what I love most about The Cousins’ War series. In one novel, a character is painted as horrible, but the next makes him or her lovable. There isn’t one “villain” you can root against. They are all good and bad. Gregory has taken the stories we read in history books and made them into people. I can’t get enough of it.

The Kingmaker’s Daughter is yet another brilliant addition to The Cousins’ War series and I’m hopelessly upset I have to wait another year to hear Elizabeth of York’s story.

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Frozen by Mary Casanova

I really, really enjoyed Frozen. More than I thought I would. It tells Sadie’s coming of age story extremely well, and even though the mystery wasn’t really much of a mystery for me, I still found myself reading as quickly as I could, wanting to know the next chapter of the story.

Sadie Rose has been the unofficial daughter of the Worthingtons for 11 years, after the death of her mother and nearly freezing to death herself. She’s been mute since then, finding other ways to communicate. When she stumbles across pictures of her mother, something starts to change. She finds her voice, and learns that words can make her powerful.

She starts to fight against the confines she’s been held in for 11 years. She wants to think and be her own person, not held back by who her mother was, who the Worthingtons want her to be. She wants to find out where she comes from, and use that to decide who she wants to be. It makes for a compelling story about finding your own power and knowing who you are.

The relationship I loved most in this novel was the one between Sadie Rose, Aasta and Hans. Aasta and Hans give Sadie the loving relationship she needs and wants, and they give her the care the Worthingtons don’t. Their interactions always gave me a smile.

Frozen is a novel different than what I’ve been reading lately. It’s 1920’s setting gives it an interesting backdrop that really works with the underlying mystery. It’s a good read and definitely one I’ll be recommending to people.

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Painter of Silence by Georgina Harding

Painter of Silence had me intrigued from the first moment I read the description. I just knew it was going to be a book that slowly made my heart ache and twist, but it would be done so beautifully, I’d have no choice but to keep reading, knowing there may not be that perfect, happy ending.

The descriptions in this book are gorgeous. Harding paints the world in such a way that I could picture everything, down to the smallest detail. Usually books that are written that wonderfully fail to have a good plot to go with it, but Painter of Silence is not one of those books. It doesn’t have a life altering plot twist, or a love triangle for the ages. But it does have a story to tell, and between all the lovely words and phrases, Harding tells it.

Augustin can’t hear the world around him, and can only understand the world from how he sees it, can only communicate using pictures to show what he wants to say. He needs to find his childhood friend, Safta, and tell her something important. This is how he ends up on the stairs of the hospital, near death. The story weaves beautifully between the past and the present, showing how vastly different the worlds of Augustin and Safta are, even while being in the same location at times.

There’s the world before the war, when Augustin and Safta were friends, she being the only one who could communicate with him, at times. And then there’s the time leading up to the war, when her heart is broken by a family friend, and then her family being fractured and split apart because of the war. And there’s the after, when Augustin shows up at the hospital and he and Safta reconnect. Time passing in this novel flows effortlessly and it’s just another piece of this fantastically painted novel.

Painter of Silence is not a light read. I had to focus in on every word in order to get the full story. But it is so worth it to read these words. Harding has written an amazing work of contemporary fiction and it needs to be read.

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Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly

There wasn’t anything necessarily wrong with Revolution, but there was something that kept me from connecting with the story. I don’t usually have as much trouble finding something to tie myself to in a book, but for some reason, I just couldn’t get into this book.

Andi is basically a mess, and even though she knows it, she refuses to acknowledge just how bad she is. She’s suffering greatly, but fights against that to maintain at least a slight resemblance to okay. It’s because of this that her father takes her to Paris and she starts a search in the pages of an old diary that ends with her finding a way to live the life she’s been given. I wasn’t in love with Andi’s character, but I understood her a little bit. I’ve never had such a loss as she had, but I still understand a bit of her desperation for something else in life besides the pain it is now.

There’s a tiny bit of romance in here, and I do think it’s just the right amount. Any less and Andi wouldn’t end up where she needs to be. Any more and it would have taken away from the main point of the story. Donnelly did do a fantastic job when it came to this.

I’m usually a huge fan of anything with historical context, but it wasn’t until the last 50 or so pages I actually became interested in the story. I felt like the novel dragged a bit and could have been a little bit neater, cleaner, and tighter. It took a long while to build up to the exciting part of the novel and I wish there either could have been more of the history or less of everything else. I’m not really sure which I’d prefer.

Overall, Revolution was not a bad book. I just didn’t find the connection I needed to fully enjoy it. I’m sure this book is loved by many for a reason, but for me, it just didn’t cut it.