Dear Miss Kopp is the sixth book in the Kopp Sisters series by Amy Stewart, and I was thrilled to receive an advanced review copy from NetGalley. This is one of my favorite historical series, and if you haven’t read it, I strongly recommend picking up the first book, Girl Waits With Gun. What makes…
If you’re trying to avoid thinking about the pandemic, this will NOT be the book for you. Otherwise, it’s another fantastic novel from Emma Donoghue, author of Room and The Wonder. This is a historical novel set in Dublin in 1918 during World War I and the devastating influenza pandemic. Julia Power is a 30-year old nurse in…
I love this series, which is about a real-life woman in the 1910’s who was one of the first female deputy sheriffs. Amy Stewart builds the novels in this series around actual people and events and she ends each one with a description of her research. If you haven’t read the series, but like historical…
I spent months reading this book, which is unusual for me. I tend to read a book straight through once I’ve started, but with this book (and maybe given the time I was reading it) I felt I needed to go slow and take breaks. There are parts of this book I flew through, and…
I loved Burns’ two books of short stories, Catching the Barramundi and The Settling Earth so I was happy to receive a copy of her first novel, The Bishop’s Girl. It’s a story about a team of archivists who are trying to solve a 100-year old mystery about an unknown woman found in the grave…
Ghost Talkers is an ideal summer vacation read if you like historical and paranormal fiction. Set in Le Havre during World War I, it’s about a team of women who are helping the British troops by serving as mediums. Their role is to channel the dead, collecting the last messages and more importantly, the last observations of…
I wanted to love this book by the author of Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand. I didn’t love it, a problem I’m having with a lot of books this year. I expected the book to be different from Major Pettigrew, so that wasn’t the problem. I was disappointed with the lack of character development and the…
When I’m reading a novel about a historical figure, I want the book to be factual enough that I get a good sense of who the person was. I also want it to have an interesting story. And finally, if I admire the person, I don’t want it to be a story that makes me…
I don’t usually review a Book 2 in a series, but I wanted to write about this one because I just didn’t enjoy it as much as the first. I love a good historical mystery, and Bess Crawford is a strong character as a British World War I nurse serving in France. The first book…
I really enjoyed this historical novel about World War I. It focuses on a very specific group: the lives of Harvard and Radcliffe students at the outbreak of World War I. Helen Brooks is an upper-class student attending Radcliffe in the fall of 1914. She’s embarrassed by her mother, an activist most recently arrested for…
The Beekeeper’s Apprentice is Laurie R. King’s take on Sherlock Holmes towards the end of his career. In this first book of a series, Holmes meet fifteen-year-old Mary Russell, an independent girl who is as clever and observant as he is. As the title suggests, he begins tutoring her in the ways of detective work,…
I was excited about this book, because I’ve been looking for a good historical mystery to sink my teeth into for a while. I love the Monk series by Anne Perry, and I used to like C.S. Harris’ Sebastian series, but it’s gotten a little repetitive and less historical. The other books that get recommended…
There's always room for one more...
I read, breathe, and live in bookish worlds.
Book Reviews
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"She had read novels while other people perused the Sunday papers" - Mary Elizabeth Braddon
"The world was hers for the reading."
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