Title: The Dressmaker
Author: Kate Alcott
Category: Fiction, Historical
Publisher: Knopf, February 2012
Starred Review: 2 out of 5 stars
There are two reasons I decided to pick up Kate Alcott’s The Dressmaker. One, because of this article that says that Kate Alcott is a pen name that the author came up with when her book wouldn’t sell because of bad sales and two, because it’s about the Titanic. And I just can’t pass up a good Titanic novel.
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Title: Vixen
Author: Jillian Larkin
Category: Young Adult, Historical Fiction
Publisher: Random House, December 2010
Starred Review: 4 out of 5 stars
I got my reading copy from Around the World ARC Tours.
The roaring 20s is not a decade I’ve given much thought to really. And I don’t think I’d read any historical fiction from that era until Vixen either. Jillian Larkin does a very good job of creating this world as well. Or, re-creating it, really. Because obviously the 1920s happened. Vixen takes place smack in the middle of a very interesting time period — in the midst of both prohibition and the excitement of girls being flappers. It was a restrained time period, where young women were still expected to be prim and proper, dressed modestly, and be courted by men under careful supervision. But, as we usually know, proper girls find ways to rebel.
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Title: The Vespertine
Author: Saundra Mitchell
Category: Young Adult, Paranormal
Publisher: Harcourt Children’s Books, March 2011
Starred Review: 3 out of 5 stars
I got my reading copy from Around the World ARC Tours. Also, I had it on netGalley.
I’ve got to admit I was really excited about The Verspertine. First of all, I love historical fiction, and second of all, sometimes I don’t think there’s enough in YA. However, The Vespertine isn’t just historical YA, it’s also paranormal, and I’m not such a huge fan of the paranormal bandwagon.
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Title: The Doomsday Book
Author: Connie Willis
Category: Science-Fiction
Publisher: Random House, August 1993
Starred Review: 4 out of 5 stars
I’ve been reading a lot of Connie Willis lately. I guess maybe I’ve finally found a science-fiction author I love. Took a while, ha. Anyway, this book is usually slated to be Willis’s best, and given that it lives in the same universe as Blackout and All Clear, I knew I had to read it.
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Title: Forge
Author: Laurie Halse Anderson
Category: Young Adult, Historical Fiction
Publisher: Simon & Schuster, October 2010
Starred Review: 4 out of 5 stars
“Above us the sky passed from the Year of Our Lord 1777 to the Year of Our Lord 1778 in darkness. Someone had stolen the moon from the sky.”
That is my favorite line from Forge, a line that resonated with me throughout the rest of the book. It illustrates exactly how the book is: haunting, beautiful, poignant, wonderful.
I don’t think I enjoyed Forge as much as I did the first book, Chains (see my review here). This is because Forge is narrated by and about Curzon, not Isabel. While I liked Curzon in the previous story, he was a side character who we didn’t get to know all that well. However, in Forge, he’s it.
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Hi, my name is Sarah! My blog title tells you everything you need to know -- I am a writer, reader, & dreamer.
I hold an MA in English and an MFA in Creative Writing. I spent several years as a Children's and YA bookseller with Barnes & Noble, and a year as Director of Youth at my church. Right now, I work as a Web Publicist for a major publishing house.
I'm originally from Pittsburgh, PA, but I currently live in NYC with a great roommate and my darling cat, a tortie named Lola. I'm an avid Pittsburgh Steelers fan, love London, traveling, social media, reading, and cooking.
More about me here.
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