A novel about "mad" women being sent off to the colonies.

I found this an interesting look at women in 17 century France, Malye has obviously done her research. I liked that you get each characters perspective and story.

Good for people who like women's stories and history

Beautifully written, however it was a book that I struggled to submerge myself in. I was very intrigued by the synopsis, and felt that this book had a lot of potential. I just struggled connecting to the storyline.

the use of french words was really annoying (aren't the characters meant to speak french? i feel the same way about english films set in non english speaking countries featuring english actors putting on non english accents) and it just wasn't all that compelling

I’ll tell you this right off the bat: keep notes while you’re reading Pelican Girls. A simple peace of paper for names and basic events will do. This is the advice I always give to people about “epics”, but at 368 pages, I didn’t expect to need it. (I needed it.)

But I loved this book. It’s not light reading. It certainly requires you to be awake and alert. But I enjoyed it - I have a “thing” for epics (not Greek ones). I was attracted to the concept: the little-known history of French women (from an “asylum”) being sent to the “colonies” as wives. Almost absurd, almost unthinkable, a non-idealised look at 18th century society. (I read this at the same time as The Spirit Bares Its Teeth and it’s a really uncanny parallel despite the genre differences.)

It maybe wasn’t the most compelling book at all times (generally epics across person, time, and place do have “boring” parts), and it took me a bit longer to finish than the average book. I wasn’t sold on the sapphic bits really, it wasn’t so very believable, and almost felt forced.

And yet, I really enjoyed it, and I recommend it to lovers of historical fiction and character-driven novels.

A very enjoyable read, following three young women shipped from France to the new settlement in Louisiana to help populate the struggling colony. Pelican Girls gives a window into a time and place that many readers will be quite unfamiliar with, and does so in a very engaging way through the stories of these three and the many characters and travails they encounter along their journey. The main characters are beautifully rendered and easy to empathize with as they venture across the world and into the unknown. Highly recommend for fans of historical fiction.

I went into this with so much promise and felt that it overall under delivered and seemed a little flat. The writing was good and it conveyed the story well but i just feel like it wasn't exactly there for me. The characters needed a little more fleshing out and felt a little flat in places. I also got confused with some of the girls as they all seemed kind of similar at certain points. I don't think this is too much of a bad book but i wish it had a been more neatening up of it just to iron out what i didn't love about it.

This was okay! I found it way too slow and dry to really capture my attention though. For a character drive novel, I need to care about the characters, and I just didn't here. It felt very empty.

I really enjoyed this book. I found it fascinating to learn about this period of history and events I had no idea had occurred. I loved the women it focused on, both brilliant and flawed in their own unique way. Would recommend

It’s taken me quite a while to write this review, because I really needed to linger with this story before I gave my thoughts.

Pelican Girls tells the story of young women - criminals, orphans and “mad women” - sent from an asylum in Paris to Louisiana to serve as wives to the settlers. The volume of research and attention to detail is where this book really shines, the author has clearly taken the time to understand the realities of this period and represented it accurately.

However, the story is very heavily character driven, with little plot actually occurring “on page”. We take huge jumps through time and miss some fairly significant changes in characters lives, and I felt like I could never really bond with the characters to balance this out. I kept reading and did finish the book, but at times it felt like a slog because not much was really happening, we were just getting informed of things after the fact.

Ultimately, I wanted to love this more because the premise feels so interesting, but it’s really just a bit forgettable and long.

1720 paris young women were chosen from La Salpêtrière hospital to board the ship Baleine to North America Louisiana Territory to become brides for the settlers.
We mainly follow three women and their journey across the ocean and what happened to them once they reach Louisiana.
A story of love, loss and friendship.
Reading the synopsis of this book I thought I'd love it but it was really hard to get into at time's and took me alot longer to read than a book that length normally would.
The story was well researched but I'm not sure the writing style was for me hence the rating of 3 stars.

Pelican Girls was far from a badly written book in the simplest sense, but it was spectacularly uncompelling for a book aiming to be as character-driven as this. For this plot to work (a plot where very little happens on the page: that is, so much of it is simply mentions of events that happen out of sight), I needed to care a lot more about any of the characters. But, callous as it might sound, I didn’t care in the slightest about any of the narrators. They were bland and boring and a good chunk of anything I got about them in terms of character development consisted of simply being told about them. As I said, spectacularly uncompelling and unsympathetic. And that was before one of them became a slave-owner. Am I supposed to mind that less because she didn’t treat them horrifically? Ha.

Unrelatedly, this book also contained a pet peeve: random French words thrown into the narrative instead of their English equivalents, when every single main character here is… speaking French. A minor quibble it may seem, but still irritating enough.

I applaud the amount of research and time that must have gone into this book, and deeply appreciate the author shedding light on this part of history. I learnt a lot and I am thankful for that.

However, I can’t deny that this book was oftentimes a struggle to get through. I found the way in which it was told always kept me at a distance from the characters, so I never felt much emotional connection to them, but considering the subject matter I should have felt very deeply about them. I felt like I never had a grip on who they were, how they fully felt or what motivated them.

I can see that the author was placing these women at the centre of their narratives - the men in their lives controlled so much but their stories remained theirs which was a joy to see. It just felt like there was a lot of telling, not showing and I always struggle with that, but of course that could just be my interpretation. There are some glowing reviews for this book, and rightly so. It just didn’t fully work for me.

I couldn't put down this fascinating exploration of a corner of history about which I knew nothing! So evocative, and Malye is so effective at getting into these characters' heads. I did not want to leave them behind!

Beautifully written, compelling and thought provoking, I was drawn by the cover and blurb, not one I would normally read but I’m glad I did, im recommending this to my book club as I’d love to chat about this to others, thanks to net galley for the advanced copy.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC to review!

3 stars!

The premise of this really caught my attention and I was so ready to devour it. The writing is stunning and really does show us the many things women had to go through and experience. But it also touches on topics such as friendship, the strength to keep going and survive, mental health, abortions, the horrors of what women go through, pregnancy, and even love

I didn't connect per se with any of the characters, and it took me a while to get through it, I began reading on the 6th or 7th and finished on the 16th but I enjoyed this and was thriller to be introduced to Julia Malye's work.

I’m so sad I didn’t love this one! The premise was so interesting and the writing was atmospheric but I struggled with connecting to the characters and what was going on. I think if I was reading the book physically I might have been able to connect more, if that makes sense, but I do believe it was well written, at least what I read!