Do you really adore Miss Marple? Does the idea of a 16th century Miss Marple poking about in people’s households light up your imagination? If so, then you may find yourself enjoying A Question of Guilt far more than I did. This book definitely has its strong points – the author, who has written several…
The Blossoming Years is just that – the tale of a young man who blossoms into an adult. However, I saw it more as this man’s fantasy, rather than anything based in reality. Where else but in fiction can you be the star student of your school, the hero of the football game (especially when…
Conceptually, The Rossetti Letter is similar to Lauren Willig’s Pink Carnation series: Both tell the modern day stories of doctoral candidates in Europe, searching for a mystery lost in the crumbling papers and bound books of the past, and at the same time recounting the historical story about the people they are researching. However, this…
Immortal is rather a hard book to pigeon hole. The title suggests vampires, but it’s not a novel of the paranormal, unless you count the fact that the protagonist ages abnormally slowly, over the course of centuries instead of years. If pressed I would say this is historical fiction because so much of the book…
If you’ve been reading my reviews for awhile, then you know I’m a sucker for Colonial Romances. They’re pretty thin on the ground, though. If American Historicals are scarce, then Colonial Romances are even scarcer. Though I like my happy endings (I am a romance reader, after all), now and then I’ll pick up some…
The Jewel Trader of Pegu was a very difficult book for me to grade. On the one hand, it features a truly unique setting and story – and beautiful writing. However, at times I felt as if the main story had more to do with the hero’s love of himself and his newfound sense of…
Suzannah Dunn states in an essay included in this novel that she seeks to write real human drama rather than stilted costume drama. I find this aim admirable, and I’m all for books that connect and resonate with the reader. However, in this case a cursory historical gloss and soap operatic tone turned what could…
I picked up The Tea Rose on a whim a couple of years ago. I’d never heard of the author, but the cover was beautiful and the summary sounded promising. After several days of smiling, laughing, and crying my way through the book, I was so glad for that whim, because the story immediately became…
Knowing that Karen Mercury specializes in writing well-researched novels set in Africa and having seen positive reviews of her earlier work, I jumped at the chance to review Strangely Wonderful. The book certainly was strange, but it felt so disjointed that I never could grasp the wonder of it. The author certainly did her historical…
I dearly love getting lost in vast historical sagas, so when I heard about The House of Lanyon, I knew I just had to read it. Having plowed through this book, I can say that while it is huge and also historical, the characters never fully come to life. Nearly 600 pages of bland, colorless…
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