Rachel Reads & Reviews

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Tag: #historicalfiction

  • Series Highlight: I Survived

    Funny story. Even though I have seen this series around for years (it was first published around 2009), it was placed next to the “Choose your own adventure” series and like an idiot, I judged it by the cover and thought it was another one of thsoe with cooler covers. Fast forward to last month,…

  • History Mystery P2

    The second half of the series gets a little bit darker. The mysteries involve dangerous individuals whose actions are not explained away as a misunderstanding or bitterness. Often there is real hate or greed motivating them, and they have the weapons to back them up if others get in their way. There is more exploration…

  • Reading Goals 2025

    I’m beginning this year with my feel-good favorite by Steve Kluger, My Most Excellent Year. This is the tenth year in a row I’ve read it and just the sort of comfort-reading one needs when faced with so much uncertainty in the world. This year I truly mean it when I say I want to…

  • Book of the Month: Gone with the Wind

    Ah yes, the book that has lived for almost a hundred years and it makes one feel like they’ve lived through a hundred years. Yes, I’m talking about Margaret Mitchell’s decade-spanning work, Gone with the Wind, covering before, during and after the Civil War from the POV of one stubborn hellion, Scarlet O’Hara. There’s not…

  • America’s First Daughter Review

    After thoroughly enjoying Dray and Kamoie’s book on the Hamiltos, I had to go read their first book together about Jefferson’s eldest daughter, Martha “Patsy’ Jefferson and how she shaped the founding father we know today. It is always said that behind every great man, there was a great woman and this is especially prominant…

  • Nov Books

    Private Label by Kelly Yang A perfect title for the private things that Serene and Lian hide from their peers and their family in this moving, coming of age romance. Serene is the daughter of single mom and major fashion designer, Lily Lee. Her real name is Liu but her mother’s Board of Trustees thought…

  • Book of the Month: Crocodile on the Sandbank

    A bit of The Mummy, a bit of a stand-alone Agatha Christie, the adventures of Amelia Peabody feature a plain, spinster along the lines of Jane Eyre. Albeit a more sprightly Jane Eyre what with the shooting, escavating and mummy-hunting. Let me back up a bit with the death of Amelia’s father, she decides to…

  • Book of the Month: The Great Alone

    Ah the great Alaskan wilderness, a place to reconnect to nature. Or in Hannah’s novel, a place where family demons come to tear them apart with no chance for help in the middle of a blizzard. Aka a nightmare in my thinking.

  • Isabel and the Rogue Review

    Isabel Luna is like the Jan Brady of the Brady Bunch. A middle sister longing to break out of everyone’s shadow and be more than people think of her. That’s what the author initially believed of her creation too, but as you get to know Isabel, the reader and one Captain Sirius Dovan learn there’s…

  • Sandra Proudman Interview

    Sandra Proudman is a proud Mexican-American author and literary agent at the Gallt and Zacker Literary Agency. She graciously took the time to answer my questions in her first interview for her debut novel, Salvación. Enjoy! 1. To start from the beginning, who are some of your literary inspirations? It’d be too hard to just…