Rachel Reads & Reviews

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Tag: #historicalfiction

  • 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…

  • Book Highlight: Our Narrow Hiding Places

    While in my happy place of Barnes & Noble, my mother and I stumbled upon an author’s promotion. Kristopher Jansma, like the rest of us, got to spend quality family time during the pandemic and it is in this isolation he got to learn more about his grandmother’s history in the Netherlands where she endured…

  • Ranking Fifth Avenue Rebels

    Shupe’s latest Gilded Age romance delivers on opulence, scandals and simmering romance so let’s get to it. The Lady Gets Lucky: This was a lovely book wit a nice share of character development for both. When shy Alice goes to Kit for seduction lessons so she may marry a man who’ll love her for her…

  • Top 5 Caroline Years

    After reading Laura Ingells Wilder’s classic Little House on the Prarie series, and then the sequel inspired by her daughter, The Rose Years. It’s only fitting to go back in time to mid 19th century to see the coming of age of Caroline Quiner, the beloved Ma of America’s famous pioneer family.

  • Vanessa Riley Interview

    Vanessa is the prolific, best-selling author of the Lady Worthing Mysteries series, Queen of Exiles, Rogues and Remarkable Women, and much more. From mystery to historical to regency, Vanessa puts strong, dynamic Black women and women of color in her novels in all their joy and complexity. She graciously took the time to answer my…

  • Book of the Month: Lessons in Chemistry

    Don’t let that gorgeous hair and sassy look fool you, Elizabeth Zott takes chemistry and cooking seriously. In fact, she takes everything seriously. She rarely smiles, and she has good reason to. Being a female scientist in the early 60s is just hell. No respect, constant comments from men and women, no one likes her…

  • July Books

    Bloomability by Sharon Creech I’ve always liked the cover of this book but I never actually read it. Until this month that is. It’s about a young girl, Domenica aka Dinnie who’s been kidnapped to Switzerland. Well, not really kidnapped. Her family is having lots of dysfunction that the eleven year old doesn’t comprehend so…

  • Book of the Month: The Duke and I

    After my friend’s sister insisted she choose this book for book club with the “It’s like a modern Jane Austen,” we finished and my friend’s expectations fell short. Very short. As she kept saying when we finished “This isn’t like Jane Austen at all. Jane Austen didn’t write about horny people. I mean, they probably…