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Category: Historical Fiction

When We Lost Our Heads by Heather O’Neill

When We Lost Our Heads by Heather O’Neill

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I was instantly drawn to the cover of Heather O’Neill’s When We Lost Our Heads. But then I read the synopsis and decided to give it a pass because the main characters sounded insufferable. I ended up buying it because of the glowing reviews, and because I needed one more book to get free shipping for my Book Outlet order. I reluctantly started reading it when nothing else in my TBR pile called out to me. I was right about the main characters being insufferable, but it turns out there is much more to When We Lost Our Heads then the loathsome relationship between the main characters, and I ended up being wholly engrossed in this novel as I read it.

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The Leap Year Gene by Shelley Wood

The Leap Year Gene by Shelley Wood

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Shelley Wood’s The Leap Year Gene has an intriguing premise and is for the most part an interesting novel, but I feel like the last quarter of the novel was rushed and therefore left me feeling dissatisfied by the time I finished it. The novel is about a baby girl, Kit McKinley, who is born on February 29, 1916, and inexplicably only ages one year for every four years. The funny thing about The Leap Year Gene is that even though Kit is at the center of the novel, I found her character to be the least satisfying of the four main characters.

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The Last Garden in England by Julia Kelly

The Last Garden in England by Julia Kelly

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The Last Garden in England is the perfect novel if you are looking for something low conflict, and where all the characters get a happy ending. If you are a fan of Kate Morton’s novels, then you will most likely enjoy this one. It kind of reminded me of Morton’s The Forgotten Garden, except Morton’s stories have a darker edge to them. The Last Garden in England has an okay story, but it really is not engaging due to its predictability and because the author only skims the surface of the issues the characters face.

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The Briar Club by Kate Quinn

The Briar Club by Kate Quinn

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Yay! A new Kate Quinn novel! If you have been following along, you know I love Kate Quinn’s novels. Are they becoming more and more predictable? Yes, but who cares! I am here for the history lesson, and The Briar Club tackles a decade that I have not read much about before: the 1950s.

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James by Percival Everett

James by Percival Everett

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You have probably heard of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a story about a runaway boy, Huck Finn, and a runaway slave, Jim, who decide to sail down the Mississippi River to the free state of Illinois. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is considered to be an anti-racist book, despite its heavy use of a certain racial slur (I should point out that this slur also appears quite frequently in James as well), and the character of Jim is depicted as honorable and intelligent, albeit gullible and loyal to Huck even after Huck plays tricks on him. James is a reimagining of Huck and Jim’s adventures told from Jim’s perspective, and it tells a more authentic story about slavery and the deep-seated racism of the South, something that I think only a Black writer can do. I found James to be an uncomfortable read, but it is also a very interesting story that I recommend whether or not you have read Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

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The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill

The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill

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The Book of Negroes is a novel about an African woman who was sold into slavery, and who spends the rest of her life fighting for a tenuous freedom that takes her full circle back to her country of birth. It is a bleak story, of course, but not as violent in its depiction of the slave trade as it could have been, so I found it to be a more palatable read than some other books about slavery that I have read. What I found most interesting about The Book of Negroes, though, was the details about the African slave trade that do not get discussed much. If anything, I recommend reading The Book of Negroes for the history as you can tell Lawrence Hill put much effort into researching this novel.

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Lone Women by Victor Lavalle

Lone Women by Victor Lavalle

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I wanted to read Lone Women by Victor Lavalle as it is inspired by the women homesteaders who took advantage of the government’s offer of free land in the American mid-west to anyone who could turn the harsh, inhabitable landscape into a working farm. I love it when women are badass and prove that they can survive without men. Lone Women is also supposed to be a horror novel, and I like the horror genre, but I would say the horror in this novel is underwhelming. As compulsively readable as I found Lone Women to be, I did not find it to be very horrifying.

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