Thank you to NetGalley, Virginia Pye and the publishers for letting me read an arc of this book before its release.

I start this review by stating that I have only read about 50% of the book but decided to stop as it just wasn't doing anything for me.

The plot itself was nice and could have been really interesting, but unfortunately everything felt very flat to me. The characters had no depth and things were happening just for the sake of it, without any real purpose or major significance. I didn't love the writing either; I feel we got a lot of unnecessary descriptions for some things that, in the end, don't matter at all as they don't help with either the story or the character development.

All in all, although I personally didn't resonate with this book, I am sure there are a lot of people who will. It might be perfect for a quick vacation read or for someone who likes a very easy and, at times, entertaining read.

Being a history buff, I am a huge fan of historical fiction. This book is set in the Gilded Age -- an era that both dazzled and distressed. It is a story about a popular female writer in Gilded Age Boston who tried to be a voice of conscience and spoke for women of her times. The writing is done exquisitely and the story has relevance to today's society.

Interesting plot. I’m not extremely familiar with the gilded age, but it seemed like the entire thing was kind of unrealistic. However, I did end up liking all the characters I was supposed to like. The writing was uneven at times the pages were interesting and at times I really struggled to get through them. The ending really drug out. I did walk away from it once and was curious enough to come back and finished so glad I did. 3.5 ⭐️. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Published on my Goodreads page - link given below.

This is my favourite genre - a book about a book/s. In this case, the story revolves around a popular author of romance novels who comes to believe that she needs to write of the reality of her times, as the women’s lib movement gains ground. She needs to explore a new way of writing, a new voice, a new publisher, and new friends and family. And all this she does in good time and this journey makes good reading, but the novel doesn’t explore the real substance behind those decisions. This is where it falls short - one star for a decent plot structure, but not much more than that.

This is really more of a take-on-holiday kind of book, rather than a historical novel because the time and space of the story is given in very broad strokes - and I mean really broad strokes. For eg, a woman entering a party is said to be wearing ‘a dress of the times’ but there’s nothing of what this entails.

The characters are mere caricatures with almost no in-depth exploration of any of the complexities that you’d imagine might be felt and lived by a woman, and a couple of men, who have chosen to go against the grain of the times. This is true of a lot of the other characters too - entire families are introduced, with their back stories in a couple of paragraphs, and then left behind without a second glance. They are not people, but rather symbolic personifications of various non-conformists. Without any real complexity, we go away without really getting to know any of them even by the end of the novel.

Ultimately, this novel’s inability to capture the time and space in which it’s set makes for a very un-memorable story and easily forgettable people. This was definitely not my cup of tea!

** I read an ARC of this novel through NetGalley.

This book was quite a good read, definitely a solid 4 stars. Typically I wouldn’t read books akin to this one, but I still found myself thoroughly enjoying it, the plot was definitely very interesting though it sometimes felt a bit convoluted at times, which was either the style of writing or perhaps just me (like I said before this differs to my usual reads), the characters sometimes felt as if they lacked proper depth/development too, but I thought the protagonist was very well written, so the side characters not having that depth/development wasn’t really a dealbreaker/major issue. All in all though, I did enjoy this book and would encourage anyone who loves historical fiction to read it.

This was a wonderful and realistic tale of historical fiction but also contains themes that are relevant today.

Victoria Byrne ne Meeks, writes romantic fiction as Mrs Swann in Gilded Age Boston. However, she has grown tired of living through her heroines and longs to pen something more real and true to who she is. Touching on subjects such as abortion, women’s suffrage and emancipation this book gets to the heart of what it means to be truly free to make your own desicions and to live by your truths.

I really enjoyed Victorian as a main character and found the balance of her and Jonathan; her new editor, a really well done mix of main narrators and plot drivers. I found that alot of themes in this tale are still relevant today and I think that is what is so captivating about this tale. A well written, exciting plot with rounded, compex characters.