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 Erika von Kessler is a diva with big dreams; though she’s well into her twenties and married, she secretly longs to leave her husband and travel to Italy where she might become the star she believes she is destined to be. Her businessman husband Peter’s fervent desire to have a child, and her seeming inability to conceive, have only caused her to long even more to leave him. Fertility doctor after fertility doctor have failed to help her conceive, until the couple go to Doctor Ravell, a Boston specialist who has reportedly worked miracles in an age before artificial insemination was regularly practiced. Ravell is immediately captivated by Erika and, eventually, she by him, until their lives and ambitions become woven together.
This was not a book that sucked me in right away. In fact, I didn’t actually like the characters. Perhaps realistically, they are all very selfish in their own ways, very human and particularly flawed, but that certainly makes them hard to understand. Erika’s struggle for a child dominates the beginning of the book; it infuriated me, I must admit, when her husband refused having his sperm sample analyzed and then Ravell found out that the “fault” lay with him, not her – I find this difficult to articulate but I intensely despised him after his arrogance allowed him to go on blaming his wife for something that had nothing to do with her, when in reality it was a burden they could have borne together.
In some ways, despite the fact that I didn’t like her much, it’s easy to understand Erika’s struggle, which was particularly indicative of the early twentieth century. Her ambitions are greater than the life she has, and she is forced to contain her talent in a world which expects her to be happy as a wife and mother. Although some women are, she isn’t made for that role, and because she doesn’t fit the mold, she has to do something extreme to achieve her own dreams. Still, she doesn’t do so without any emotion, and her eventual choice is one that does in fact devastate her. I may not have appreciated the “romance” within this book much, but I can’t fault McDonnell’s characterization of these characters.
Yes, the “romance”. I really did not feel that much about any connection between Erika and Ravell. I did not like a huge number of their actions and I honestly didn’t get where the romance came from. Ravell has a complicated relationship with his gynecological patients, given he’s also having an affair with another one when the book opens, and there is some insight in how they could feel some level of intimacy towards one another. But … I just wasn’t convinced.
Anyway, the book is actually quite well written and cleverly structured, with different phases of Erika’s life mapped out with different sections of the novel, of which there are six in total. Some of the scenes are beautifully written, and I found those in Trinidad, in the jungle, to be particularly appealing, almost as though I could feel the sand and the breeze and the warm nights. I think McDonnell could be a phenomenal writer, and it’s impressive that this is her first book – it’s just a shame I didn’t relate more to the characters in this very character-driven novel.
I received this book for free for review.
 Lady Margaret Chattan knows that she’s the only person who can stop the curse that’s been plaguing her family for generations. Decades ago, Fenella Macnachtan cursed one of Margaret’s ancestors for leaving her daughter Rose to marry an English girl, causing Rose to kill herself. Both of Margaret’s brothers have fallen in love and, as the curse dictates, fallen ill shortly thereafter, with one of them near death. As the only girl born to the Chattans since the curse, Margaret is special, but as she heads homeward to Scotland, she knows that she has no idea on how to save her brothers’ lives. Then, a horrific freak accident takes the lives of nearly everyone escorting her, leaving Margaret untouched and rescued by the Macnachtan family, the very clan who have fostered the destruction of her own. Little does Margaret suspect that the head of the family, Heath, is an honorable man who has been admiring her from afar for years.
Having read The Scottish Witch a few months ago, I’ve been eager to find out how the so-called Chattan curse is defeated. It had to be; this is a series of romance novels, after all, and killing off the heroes very shortly after the books have ended just wouldn’t happen. So I was looking forward to reading about Margaret, who has spent years of her life being pursued and fighting off that pursuit, convinced that love is not the course for her, and Heath, who has little in his mind beyond how to save his family’s ancestral home. The added touch here is that of course Heath saw Margaret years ago and was captivated by her beauty, so finding her in the midst of a carriage wreck is not the first time he’s confronted by her.
I really liked this romance, though; I think sometimes the curse makes it a bit too convenient for the couple to be together, but they have chemistry. It just means that the author can write that they feel as though they’re meant to be together while still having it work within the plot, rather than either of them ever really having serious doubts about their relationship. It’s fortunate that the couple works, because I think it could easily have felt forced. The magic element isn’t too bad, either. Again, it’s something that could have felt off very easily, but it works well within the context of the book.
A quick, engaging read, The Devil’s Heart is a good choice for historical romance fans who don’t mind a little bit of magic in with their love stories. I would recommend checking out the first two books too, though, as it’s very nice to get the back story to these characters before we find out how the curse is resolved.
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 George is living out the fairly boring life of a middle-aged divorced “good guy” until one night he hears a strange noise outside his house. He finds a crane, her wing pierced by an arrow; he saves her and she flies away. The next day, a beautiful, somehow old fashioned woman called Kumiko appears outside his print shop, and he falls in love with her almost immediately. George’s adult daughter, Amanda, is mystified and somewhat jealous, living out her own life as a single mother with a small child and feeling as though she’s never quite fit in. In small, significant ways, Kumiko starts to change their lives, but never quite lets them into her own.
A re-telling of a Japanese folk tale, The Crane Wife felt to me like an odd mix of beauty and disappointment. In parts of the book, like the actual stories of the tiles, I felt that I could feel the gorgeous writing and meaning I’d found in Patrick Ness’s other works shine through. In most of the book, though, I felt disappointment, as something I’d expected to love fell apart with every page.
Perhaps this book just fell prey to the fact that I really don’t much like stories set in the “real world”. I may be the only person who just didn’t appreciate the fact that George is relieving himself in the middle of the night when he hears the crane on the very first pages of the book. I can, in a way, see how Ness was trying to juxtapose the ordinary with the fantastic, by bringing George right into our world with one of humanity’s most basic needs alongside the crane’s mysterious call and appeal. I can see that, but it’s something that I wasn’t looking for, and so the book hit a wrong note with me immediately.
Plus, the book is insistent on the fact that George is a good, nice guy. He’s one of these nice guys who seems to vaguely feel like the world owes him something for being nice; he has infinite female friends but he’s just too nice for any of them to love him, and his ex-wife actually says this in the course of the book. I don’t like this stereotype; the world doesn’t owe anyone anything and I actually think that there are plenty of women who would love a nice guy (I married one, after all). I also felt that, as the book went on, he actually proved more or less that he wasn’t really that nice a guy.
Much of the book also felt a little bit like it was trying too hard to say something meaningful. Patrick Ness’s other books are incredible and subtle; A Monster Calls affected me so much that I never actually managed to write anything about it because if anything I felt too much. With this book, I honestly just felt distanced from the characters and the story, almost as though I could see how the weaving was meant to affect me without it actually happening.
That’s not to say it’s all bad; I found some beautiful passages within the book, and I almost felt as though the interludes about the woman and the volcano could have worked as a short story on their own. Here’s one that I marked:
Her hand is raised, ready to fall, ready to end this torment, which she will admit, if only to herself, is as bad for her as it has ever been for him. She loves him and it is impossible. She hates him and that is impossible, too. She cannot be with him. She cannot be without him. And both are burningly, simultaneously true in a way that grinds the cliché into dust. (210)
I actually appreciated the message that we need to trust, to believe that those we love will love us back. But I think some of the meaning of the book slipped through the cracks for me.
I wanted to love this book, but it just didn’t happen, and in the end, I feel more disappointed by that than anything else.
I received this book for free for review.
 Mary Mallon is an Irish immigrant simply doing her best to get by in a difficult world. At the turn of the twentieth century, few jobs are open to older women, but Mary has found her calling as a cook. By the time she hits her fifth decade, Mary has cooked for some of Manhattan’s most prominent families. But sickness follows her everywhere she goes, though she barely realizes it; after cooking for a few weeks, the family is inevitably hit by an illness that kills one or more of them. Mary never puts together the pieces, but others do, and soon she’s accused of spreading typhoid around New York and killing two dozen people.
Like many people, I’d heard of “Typhoid Mary” before; Mary Mallon was the case which helped doctors realize that seemingly healthy people could be carriers of illnesses. Imprisoned for a large chunk of her life to prevent her from spreading typhoid, Mary’s case spawned the discovery of numerous other healthy carriers and spurred us towards hygiene controls that prevent diseases spreading in quite the same way. But I’d never really thought about Mary as a person before, or what it must have felt like to realize that you’d been spreading illness when you really just wanted to make a living and cooking delicious food.
That’s the dilemma that faces Keane’s fictional version of Mary. While she’s convinced – at first – that she could never be the cause of the harm that has befallen these families, that little niggling doubt enters her mind. But that doubt isn’t enough for her to give up her livelihood, and that’s what Mary Mallon ends up imprisoned when others with her condition are allowed to go free, just not to spread their illnesses. What Keane does is give us a woman who is surprisingly convincing in her decisions, even when they’re bad. We can see how she fell into getting in trouble, how the doubts preyed on her mind but she refused to believe them, and even why she kept on working and making people sick.
When I first picked up this book, I was a little bit perplexed; very shortly after the beginning of the book, Mary is imprisoned and caught for her “crimes”, and goes fighting all the way. It seemed as though there was no real lead-up and no background, but what actually happens is that the background comes later. We understand her past in the context of her future, which was a great way to actually structure the book for those who might not know who “Typhoid Mary” was. It gives us context and only later do we see how she actually became a cook and fought for that job, understanding the background of the story once we get an idea of where it’s going. Towards the end of the book, chronological events fall back into order, and thus we finish it with a full sense of who Mary is.
I really enjoyed this book; it put a catch phrase and person on the fringes of my knowledge into full perspective and delivered a great story at the same time. I’d definitely recommend Fever to those interested in historical fiction.
All external book links are affiliate links. I received this book for free for review.
 Catherine the Great is an iconic female monarch, known even to those who have never glanced at Russian history. Her reign ushered in something of a golden age for much of Russia, symbolized by cultural and physical expansion, the effects of which were felt for decades after her reign had concluded. In this biography of Catherine, Robert K. Massie covers the entirety of her life, from her origins as a relatively modest German daughter of a prince, through her disastrous marriage to the heir to the Russian throne, until her death as one of Russia’s greatest rulers.
Massie’s biography looks intimidating, at almost 600 pages long in hardcover in my edition, but his narrative of the flow of Catherine’s life is incredibly smooth and easy to read. I actually managed to read a lot in one sitting and in parts it could almost read like fiction, which makes this a very accessible non-fiction read. I can imagine most readers enjoying this if they have an interest in imperial Russia and Catherine’s long reign. Massie also makes Catherine easy to relate to; he draws from her letters and her own memoirs to try and build her character and explore how she might have been feeling through her life.
I didn’t like that there seemed to be little connection to Massie’s sources aside from the originals, though, and the notes aren’t marked in the text, which I didn’t like either. A lot of the start of the book is based on Catherine’s memoirs, which means that we have to take her word for the way that things happened, and I’d have liked some sort of evidence of external sources corroborating what she says. In reality Massie consulted a lot of sources, but it’s really hard to see what’s coming from where. It made it difficult for me at least to trust what he was saying.
That said, though, I liked how comprehensive this book was and how well it was structured. It roughly follows Catherine’s life chronologically as the book is separated into sections, but each chapter within those sections tends to deal with just one subject. This made it very easy to follow what was happening in Catherine’s life at any given time, but also allowed the author to delve deeper into each subject. As I said earlier, it’s very easy to feel sympathy for Catherine, and the frequent quoting from her memoirs and letters helps us as readers feel as though we are actually learning about the real woman. Because Massie starts at the beginning of her life, we can understand some of the motivations she’s had for later actions. In addition, Massie never passes judgement on her for any of her actions, which makes him a valuable biographer for a woman who often gains undeserved negative press for the number of “favorites” she had (when male monarchs did the same without any note).
He follows the shifts in her political focus easily, too, and traces how the relative enlightened idealism of her youth is crushed by the realities of ruling a country, an aspect of the book that I found particularly fascinating. But again, he doesn’t pass judgement on her; he doesn’t judge her for her inability to free Russia’s serfs, for her eventual censoring of the press after the French Revolution, or for any of her other political actions which don’t particularly match up with current beliefs. Catherine’s actions were not always ones that we would agree with, but Massie leaves it to readers to decide, without attempting to influence them. I found this quite valuable.
A riveting biography, Catherine the Great is a complete picture of the last, and greatest, female monarch of Russia. For anyone who enjoys history, this book would be an exceptional choice.
All external links are affiliate links. I received this book for free for review.
 The count and countess of Provence had four daughters. A normal medieval family might have been disappointed that they didn’t have any sons, but not this one, because not only can these girls inherit, they can also be manuevered into place to become queens of countries across Europe. Marguerite is first, sent away to marry the French king, where she finds herself dominated by her mother-in-law and unable to exercise her own intellect. Then Eleanore is escorted to cold and rainy England to marry the “old” English king Henry III. Beatrice and Sanchia don’t gain their status as queen until well after marriage, but each have a husband chosen to benefit the family. Throughout their lives, the sisters work together and sometimes against one another, whether or not they choose to obey the family motto, “Family comes first”.
For me, this book got off to an excellent start. I liked the relationship between the sisters as they were young, and the different ways that each sister adapts to her new life as a married woman. Because of the difference in ages, the marriages are staggered, so for a good portion of the first half of the book events are new and fresh. Each sister grows up and adapts to her marriage and husband differently, so that we get a great feel for each of their personalities and their struggles. It’s also nice to read something which focuses so clearly on the relationships between powerful siblings in a historical context and how ambition can put a huge wrench in the best of intentions.
Unfortunately, after the sisters were all married and settled, as often happens, the book started to lag. I can never really blame the author in these situations because, quite frankly, most women’s lives in this period, even those of queens, had the same cycle of pregnancy and birth which (for me at least) just doesn’t make for that exciting a story. In general, a queen gets pregnant, has a baby, and then hands the baby off to someone else. Occasionally one of them is separated from and then longs for her children, and Marguerite in particular has a dramatic time going off on Crusade for years and saving her incompetent husband, but I think the whole book lost a little bit and I struggled to get back to it. Plus, because there are four sisters, there are a number of scenes where the sisters get together and fight about various things, all of them being stubborn and none giving any ground. Beatrice is the main culprit here, as she spends most of the book longing for her sisters’ love and trying to win it and then coming up against a wall. It felt repetitive, even though there were still things going on in the wider plot.
I also think the book suffered because Eleanore and Marguerite were the more interesting queens – Sanchia and Beatrice married younger brothers who took crowns elsewhere and it is fairly clear that they hadn’t done much which was significant or left a huge historical record. The author’s hands are tied in these cases, of course.
Perhaps my expectations were too high, but Four Sisters, All Queens left me a bit cold after a promising start. Still a good prospect for someone who is looking for a book about powerful women and the relationships between them in medieval Europe.
I received this book for free for review.
 The Dale and the Seldon families are enemies, and no members of either family want anything to do with each other. Miss Daphne Dale, slightly on the shelf, unfortunately is required to attend her friend Tabitha’s wedding to a dread Seldon. Why? Because she’s fallen in love with a pen pal after she answered an ad in the papers, and the wedding is the one place that they can meet. Little does she know that her suitor is Henry Seldon, one of the family’s eligible bachelors, who opened her letter and fell for her entirely by accident, and thus one of her sworn enemies. How long can Daphne and Henry try to avoid facing the reality that they’ve fallen in love with each other despite family differences?
Elizabeth Boyle is another new-to-me romance author, albeit one I’ve heard a bit about in the past. I will be honest and confess that when I chose to read this book, it was mainly because of the really cute cover and the title; lots of romance novels are about misses and rakes but I wanted to find out how this one actively ran away. (You can imagine my disappointment when she didn’t actually run away with him).
I thought huge portions of this book were very cute, and I loved the fact that the author inserted excerpts from the couple’s love letters to each other throughout the narrative. That was an incredibly sweet touch and it gave us some insight into how they’d first fallen in love, before they realized that they were falling for the enemy. I adored their first meeting in particular, before they knew who the other was; they are both absolutely certain that they’re found The One until their family and friends tell them the truth.
The only note that I’d make as a downside was the fact that, even though the reader and both of them actually knew who the other was, it takes these two absolutely ages to actually admit it. They both kind of hope that their mysterious lover is still someone else, which gets frustrating after a while, until it becomes absolutely ridiculously obvious. I would have almost preferred that the author let them reconcile sooner and then throw some other obstacle in the way of their happiness. With a family feud, it certainly would have been possible, and it wouldn’t have been so easy to get frustrated with these characters about denying reality for most of the book.
While I wouldn’t yet put Elizabeth Boyle on my list of immediate romance authors to buy, I’ll certainly be keeping my eyes open for more of her books in the future. And the Miss Ran Away With the Rake is a lovely little romance read, just be aware that it’s not completely flawless.
All external book links are affiliate links. I received this book for free for review.
 Olivia and Clayton are young lovers, completely wrapped up in each other, until Clayton discovers that Olivia’s father is embezzling money from the government through his paper mill. Olivia refuses to believe that her father could ever do such a thing, and so asks him about it, sure that there is a perfectly innocent explanation. Instead, her lover is thrown into prison, and her father tells her that he’s been hanged.
Ten years later, Clayton walks back into Olivia’s life intent on destroying the mill which ruined his life, only to get her hauled off to Russia by accident. Convinced that she’s a spy, since that’s what Clayton’s been doing since he vanished, a group of Russian gangsters kidnap Olivia and attempt to coerce her into breaking a code for them. Clayton follows to rescue her, but doesn’t expect to fall for her charms a second time …
This was a fun read. I was mainly drawn to it because it takes place in Russia, which seemed like it would be a refreshing change from the usual Regency-style romances set in England. I’ve read and loved plenty of those but I’m definitely open to more locations and different storylines. Mostly, the setting didn’t impact hugely on the book. It’s colder and the bad guys are after the tsar instead of a king or a prince, but otherwise, the romance followed along reasonably traditional lines.
Not that I minded, because the romance itself was done well. I liked that Randol flashed back to their youth but backed it up with romance that was solidly in the present, too. Their quest to stop the assassination plot brings them together while their fragile trust is replenished. It also gives them numerous opportunities to prove themselves to one another, as events around them make life challenging. This is a really good background for a romance read, as it makes the book about a lot more than just how this particular couple can fall in love.
I’m actually quite sorry that I missed the first book in this series before reading this one, too. While I didn’t need the background of Clayton and his two fellow spies to understand what was going on, or to appreciate their relationship, I’m definitely one of those people who prefers to read a series in order, and now I think I’d probably have liked the first book.
A sweet romance with a decent spy plot that adds an extra element to the book, Sins of a Ruthless Rogue is a good romance read and I’d certainly recommend it to other romance readers.
All external book links are affiliate links. I received this book for free for review.
 Zelda Sayre is a vivid eighteen-year-old from Montgomery, Alabama, always the life of the party, when she meets F. Scott Fitzgerald. The youngest in her family, Zelda loves being the center of attention, and Scott is happy to put her at the focal point of his universe – for a time. As an aspiring author, but simultaneously a man who enjoys having fun, Scott is torn between numerous passions in a way that isn’t clear to Zelda when they meet. When they marry, they’re both certain that their lives are going to be full of success and love, with no perception of just what might happen when two vivid personalities clash.
I knew very little about Zelda Fitzgerald before I started reading this book. I had heard before that she had held back Scott’s career and that she’d been in a mental institution; I’d also read somewhere that she and Scott loved each other despite the difficulties. This book gave me a lot of insight, I felt, into the kind of woman Zelda might have been, and went a long way towards explaining how two people can love each other an absurd amount and yet hate each other at the exact same time.
The novel starts with Zelda as a young, impressionable teenager who meets Scott and completely falls for him, a Northerner with ambitions completely different from any that the boys she knows have. They quickly marry and the book spans the rest of their lives up until Scott’s death, so we get an insight as to how Zelda may have felt about all of his achievements, including his lack of them at times.
What I also really appreciated was that the novel gets across how Zelda might have felt as the wife of a man who was famous. She suffers hugely from a lack of her own identity, which made perfect sense to me; how would an ambitious, talented girl feel when she’s constantly shuffled to the side? I can’t imagine now, for myself, living in a time where my only duty was to keep house for my husband, simply because I’m not the sort of person who would be happy pouring all of my effort into someone else’s life without any real recognition of my own. This is especially true for Zelda, who watches as her husband spends the hours he’s meant to be working with a bottle in his hand, and who feels that she’s lost her own identity to support his. Her struggles were so clearly understandable to me and I could feel their mutual frustration pouring out of the pages. What’s heartbreaking about this book is that it’s also obvious that they do love each other, but it’s a destructive kind of love that is powerful but takes something huge out of both of them.
I also hadn’t realized that Zelda was a creative force in her own right, painting, writing, and dancing in a way that might have brought her recognition on her own. Perhaps not if she’d never met Scott, but once she has a foothold in the creative world, she keeps on going. She had her own art exhibitions and she was invited to dance professionally; she even had her own published novel and short stories. I had never had any idea, and now I’m actually very curious to read the fictional accounts, on both sides, of their marriage.
A wonderful book that brought a historical figure to life for me, Z is a spellbinding read. Highly recommended.
All external book links are affiliate links. I received this book for free for review.
 If Princess Maria Lucia of Austria doesn’t marry Napoleon Bonaparte, he’ll topple her father from his throne and ruin her family’s future. It’s not even a choice, in her mind, and so she leaves everything she loves behind to become the next Empress of France, in a journey startlingly reminiscent of Marie Antoinette, the beheaded Austrian queen of France. In Napoleon’s court, she meets his sister, Pauline, whose mood swings and affairs are legendary, and her chamberlain Paul, a Haitian who longs to return to his native land but can’t stop loving Pauline. Together they endure one of France’s most turbulent periods.
Michelle Moran has penned some of my favorite historical novels and I love the way she gives a focus to women in history who haven’t really been spotlighted in her last three. Marie-Louise has always existed in the shadow of Napoleon’s great love story with Josephine, his first wife and empress, and it’s lovely that Moran chose to give her a focus with this book. Napoleon’s sister Pauline is better known, but still not usually in the limelight, and Paul is a completely different focus altogether.
Unfortunately, while this premise was good, I actually preferred Marie-Louise to both Paul and Pauline. I felt much more for her as she left her home and her actual lover to marry this man that extorted money from her country and threatened her father. I should have felt more for both Paul and Pauline, but the former didn’t really appeal to me and the latter just seemed out of touch with reality. I kept hoping to get back to Marie-Louise’s story and I rushed through the other chapters so that I could spend more time with her. I can understand how Pauline in particular might appeal to another reader because she really is a character, and I know a lot of the elements here were taken from fact, but I couldn’t really feel for her at all.
Another reason I didn’t really love this one as much as some of Moran’s other books was because I found out that Marie-Louise only met Adam, the lover she leaves in the book when she has to go marry Napoleon, much later on when she’s already a married woman. I felt disappointed by this; it’s such a huge part of the plot in the beginning, when we discover Marie-Louise isn’t an innocent and that everyone knows she loves someone else, that I felt let down to discover it wasn’t really close to the truth. I would have preferred a narrative constructed more around the historical reality, and I think her departure already had the potential to be quite emotional. It isn’t a minor detail, either, like moving a date around, and it just made me feel that the way the historical gaps had been filled in wasn’t believable any more. It was a real shame and I will confess that it left me disappointed. Am I being unfair here? Maybe a little – but I always prefer the gaps in the historical record to be filled in, and an emotional reality imagined, and discovering that the emotional reality simply couldn’t have happened does have an impact on my feelings about the book.
While I still enjoyed actually reading The Second Empress, I’m afraid that I’d recommend one of Moran’s other books first, and to accept that this read might land much more on the fiction side of historical fiction.
All external book links are affiliate links. I received this book for free for review.
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