Book Review: The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: The Marriage Portrait
Author: Maggie O’Farrell
Publisher: Knopf
Publication date: September 6, 2022
Length: 355 pages
Genre: Historical fiction
Source: Purchased
Rating:

Florence, the 1550s. Lucrezia, third daughter of the grand duke, is comfortable with her obscure place in the palazzo: free to wonder at its treasures, observe its clandestine workings, and devote herself to her own artistic pursuits. But when her older sister dies on the eve of her wedding to the ruler of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio, Lucrezia is thrust unwittingly into the limelight: the duke is quick to request her hand in marriage, and her father just as quick to accept on her behalf.

Having barely left girlhood behind, Lucrezia must now enter an unfamiliar court whose customs are opaque and where her arrival is not universally welcomed. Perhaps most mystifying of all is her new husband himself, Alfonso. Is he the playful sophisticate he appeared to be before their wedding, the aesthete happiest in the company of artists and musicians, or the ruthless politician before whom even his formidable sisters seem to tremble?

As Lucrezia sits in constricting finery for a painting intended to preserve her image for centuries to come, one thing becomes worryingly clear. In the court’s eyes, she has one duty: to provide the heir who will shore up the future of the Ferranese dynasty. Until then, for all of her rank and nobility, the new duchess’s future hangs entirely in the balance.

Full of the beauty and emotion with which she illuminated the Shakespearean canvas of Hamnet, Maggie O’Farrell turns her talents to Renaissance Italy in an extraordinary portrait of a resilient young woman’s battle for her very survival.

I hesitated about picking up The Marriage Portrait, despite having loved Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet. I tend to shy away from “literary” fiction, and assumed this book might not be for me. Fortunately, with a book group discussion to motivate me, I went ahead and started… and then couldn’t put it down.

The Marriage Portrait is a taut, beautifully written story about a powerless young girl forced into marriage and a life she never wanted. Set in the mid-1500s, the book starts with a shock: Lucrezia, Duchess of Ferrara, is at dinner with her husband, and realizes with utter certainty that he intends to kill her.

From there, we move back to the beginning of her story. The middle child and youngest daughter of the Duke of Florence, Lucrezia de Medici has always been a bit odd — defiant, artistic, and with her own private passions and flights of fancy. When her oldest sister dies on the eve of her marriage, Lucrezia is expected to wed Maria’s fiance, despite the fact that Lucrezia is only thirteen. The marriage can only be delayed so long, and by age fifteen, she’s wed to Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara.

Alfonso seems at first to be good-hearted, but his kindness is a veneer for a ruthlessness that Lucrezia only uncovers through missteps and dangerous confrontations. Slowly, she comes to see that theirs is not a marriage of companionship or even affection, as her own parents’ marriage is. Instead, she’s firmly under Alfonso’s control, cherished when she behaves, but shown just how badly things could go for her if she doesn’t. As a year passes and Lucrezia does not become pregnant, her situation becomes more dire. Timelines converge, as the chapters where Lucrezia anticipates her own murder are interspersed between longer sections following her earlier life and the timeline of her marriage.

From the historical record, we know that the real Lucrezia died at age fifteen after a year of marriage, supposedly of a sudden, severe illness, and that doubts remained about the true cause of death. In The Marriage Portrait, the author keeps readers on our toes, providing room for doubt and for the possibility of other outcomes while building a sense of growing dread with each passing chapter.

The book shows how devastatingly trapped Lucrezia is, even leaving aside the issue of what a sociopath her seemingly charming husband turns out to be. She wishes for rescue, and wishes that she hadn’t been forced into this marriage — but being forced into a marriage is literally the point of her and her sisters’ existence. A marriage for her family’s political gain was invitable; if she’d been lucky, she may have ended up with a kinder man, but the prospective husband’s character was never going to be a deciding factor. For girls of her status and rank, the power and advantages of a marriage are all that matters.

The theme of being trapped is established early on, as a young Lucrezia is allowed to see the exotic tiger newly added to her father’s menagerie:

The cry again! It was not so much a roar, no, which is what Lucrezia had expected: this had a yearning, desperate rasp to it. The sound, Lucrezia thought, of a creature captured against its will, a creature whose desires have all been disregarded.

There’s a sense of doom in even the most mundane of descriptions. Lucrezia can never escape the signs that her future is full of danger:

In the square room, from a hook in the wall, hangs the skirt of the gown. The bodice and sleeves are separate entities, draped over the credenza and the table. To Lucrezia, as she steps over the threshold, it looks as if a woman has been cut into four pieces and calmly arranged around the furniture.

Once I started The Marriage Portrait, I found myself completely immersed and didn’t want to put the book down. Lucrezia is a fascinating, tragic character, trapped in a world that offers her no safe refuge and no true allies. She possesses an artist’s soul and a fiery will, and neither trait is valued by her husband or his court. As Lucrezia senses her own violent death looming just ahead, there seems to be few options. No one is coming to save her. She’ll have to save herself… or literally die trying.

Once again, this was a terrific book group pick, and I’m so thankful I had that little push that I needed to dive in and read this gorgeous, terrifying, powerful story. Highly recommended.

Purchase links: Amazon – Audible audiobook – Bookshop.org – Libro.fm
Disclaimer: When you make a purchase through one of these affiliate links, I may earn a small commission, at no additional cost to you.

23May2026

Book Review: The Foursome by Christina Baker Kline

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: The Foursome
Author: Christina Baker Kline
Publisher: Mariner Books
Publication date: May 12, 2026
Length: 384 pages
Genre: Historical fiction
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley
Rating:

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Christina Baker Kline comes a boldly original reimagining of an astonishing true story of two sisters in nineteenth-century North Carolina—Kline’s own distant relatives—who married world-famous conjoined twins from Siam.

When Chang and Eng Bunker arrive in Wilkes County in 1839, they’re not just a curiosity—they’re a sensation. Everyone is eager to learn whether the salacious rumors about them are true. Within months, the twins have opened a general store, bought land, and begun building a plantation. Now, word has it, they’re looking for wives—and in a place that thrives on gossip and legacy, their ambitions set the community on edge.

Sarah and Adelaide Yates, daughters of a once-prominent local family brought low by scandal, are drawn into their orbit. Bold, beautiful Addie sees in the twins’ fame a chance to reclaim her future. Sallie, quiet and observant, isn’t so sure. When the twins’ lives become entangled with theirs, they must navigate loyalty, longing, and identity in a world where everything—including race, class, and gender—is rigidly defined.

Spanning five decades and unfolding against the backdrop of a fractured nation hurtling toward war, The Foursome is both intimate and a story of love and constraint, identity and reinvention. With piercing insight and emotional precision, Kline brings to life a forgotten chapter of American history and the complex, boundary-defying marriages at its center.

In this fascinating work of historical fiction, author Christina Baker Kline shines a spotlight on the conjoined twins for whom the term “Siamese twins” was coined, by showing their lives through the eyes of one of the sisters who married them.

Most of us take for granted that, at the very least, we come into this world alone and die our own deaths But this was not true for my husband and his brother. They could not escape each other.

The Foursome is narrated by Sarah “Sallie” Yates, a young woman with a damaged reputation as the novel opens in the 1840s. After a family scandal, she and her younger sister Adelaide face limited prospects. When the famous conjoined twins Chang and Eng Bunker (the “Siamese Double Boys”) settle in their North Carolina community, the sisters are as curious as everyone else, but when curiosity turns to courtship, it’s Addie who leads the way, seeing the twins as a way out of their difficulties and a route to a secure future.

The engagement and marriage is, of couse, scandalous. Chang and Eng are joined by a band of flesh at the base of their chests. They’re active, healthy, educated men who pride themselves on living as gentlemen, but to the people of North Carolina, they’re seen as foreigners and as freaks. When the brothers marry the Yates sisters, the gossip is intense and personal.

As Sallie shares with readers, navigating a marriage to a man who can never leave his brother’s side presents complex challenges, from the embarrassment of figuring out sleeping (and sexual) arrangements to sharing a household with her sister to never once being able to have a truly private conversation with her husband. Sallie’s marriage to Eng does eventually turn into one of love and compatibility, but the unavoidable presence of Addie and Chang is a constant source of tension.

Still, something must work. Between them, the two couples have a total of twenty-one children over the years! The sisters eventually demand separate homes, but even so, the rigid scheduling and presence of a husband’s brother mean that the families can never truly be separate.

I saw how they leaned on each other — how their bond became a kind of fortress, both shelter and prison. How, sometimes, it shut out even those who loved them.

Beyond the domestic, The Foursome explores the lives of the Bunker husbands and wives in the context of the looming Civil War. Chang and Eng are landowners — and in the North Carolina of the 1800s, that means that they’ve slave owners. Sallie accepts that enslaved workers are simply a fact of life, but over time, her eyes are opened to what this actually means for the people who raise her children and care for her needs. As their community is drawn into war, and as sons of both households go off to fight, Sallie increasingly finds herself at odds with Addie and their husbands about the Confederacy’s ideals and what it is that they’re fighting to preserve.

Sallie’s voice in The Foursome is open and revealing. She shares the joyful moments, especially as she gives birth to child after child, as well as the discomfort of being married to a man who’ll always belong more to someone else. The descriptions of the family’s adaptation to the brothers’ conjoined nature offer a fascinating look into a situation that seems practically beyond belief.

*(L–R) Sarah, her son Patrick Henry, Eng, Chang, his son Albert, Adelaide*

I did wish that Sallie’s awakening to the evils of slavery came sooner. I couldn’t help but feel that some of her change in perspective was driven by the purely personal, in terms of how slavery affected her rather than out of a sense of compassion and justice for the enslaved. She can’t make up for the past, but she eventually attempts her own version of reparation by offering new beginnings and opportunities to those she’d wronged.

There are sins of action and sins of inaction. I cannot forgive myself for the times I saw wrong and turned away.

Because the story is told through Sallie’s point of view, we only understand Addie through her eyes. This is understandable, yet sometimes frustrating. Addie is the catalyst for the marriage — I would have liked a deeper understanding of Addie’s inner life and why she felt so strongly that the choice to marry the brothers was their best (and only) option.

The Foursome is actually the second novel I’ve read about these historical figures. Chang and Eng by Darin Strauss, published in 2000, is a fictionalized account of their lives as told by Eng. I don’t remember a lot of the details at this point, but I do remember how interesting I found it. Reading The Foursome, I was reminded of many of the biographical details, and was entirely drawn in by this new approach and perspective on their lives.

The Foursome is a powerful, compelling read about remarkable lives, set against the backdrop of one of the most devastating and consequential periods in American history. Sallie’s voice is memorable, and the experiences she describes paint a picture of a particular family’s life that might seem unbelievable if it weren’t actually based on historical events. Highly recommended.

Purchase links: Amazon – Audible – Bookshop.org – Libro.fm
Disclaimer: When you make a purchase through one of these affiliate links, I may earn a small commission, at no additional cost to you.

15May2026

First Lines Friday 5/15/2026

Posted in Fun and Whimsy by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

First Lines Friday is a weekly feature for book lovers created by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines? Here’s how to join in:

Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page.
Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first.
Finally… reveal the book!

This week’s lines are from a 2025 book with a split timeline:

At our school in Waikiki, there were two camps. Those whose families were invited to the grand opening of the Moana Hotel, and those who weren’t. Ours wasn’t, but I don’t care because I think it was a foolish idea to build a hotel right on the beach.

So what’s the book?

The Guest in Room 120 by Sara Ackerman
Published: September 23, 2025
336 pages

Synopsis:

A gripping novel inspired by one of America’s most mysterious deaths, that of Stanford University’s founder Jane Stanford.

1905. As the mother of a university and a woman with an iron will, Jane Stanford has made her share of enemies. After a scare at her mansion in San Francisco and on the advice of her doctor, she flees to Honolulu and the fashionable new Moana hotel. But as fate would have it, the island is not as safe as it seems.

2005. Zoe Finch is a bestselling author who desperately needs a jump start on her next novel when she makes a split decision to attend a writers conference at the Moana under an assumed name. As a storm brews offshore, she begins having nightmares that feel hauntingly real. Terrified, Zoe enlists the help of mystery writer Dylan Winters, and over the course of the week, races to uncover the shocking truth of what happened in the hotel one hundred years ago almost to the day.

1905. Iliahi Baldwin’s life changes the moment she lands a job at the Moana. Newly hired and reeling from a tragic loss, she strikes up an unlikely friendship with the formidable Jane Stanford upon her arrival, leaving young Ili devastated when the unthinkable happens. Ili knows things, but there are powerful people who need the truth to remain hidden, and to cross them could prove disastrous.

An unforgettable tale of betrayal, secrets, and death that still echoes through the years.

I picked up a copy of this book a few months ago, but haven’t read it yet. I’ve heard great things!

Does this sound like something you’d enjoy?

Happy Friday! Wishing everyone a great weekend!

14May2026

Book Review: An Ordinary Sort of Evil (A Rip Through Time, #5) by Kelley Armstrong

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: An Ordinary Sort of Evil
Series: A Rip Through Time, #5
Author: Kelley Armstrong
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Publication date: May 19, 2026
Length: 320 pages
Genre: Historical fiction/mystery
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via Netgalley
Rating:

New York Times bestselling author Kelley Armstrong returns to Victorian Scotland in the latest in the genre-blending Rip Through Time series.

Modern-day homicide detective Mallory Mitchell has grown accustomed to life in Victorian Scotland after travelling 150 years into the past into the body of a housemaid. She’s built a new life for herself. Even though she works as an assistant to forensic-science pioneer Dr. Duncan Gray and Detective Hugh McCreadie, she considers them true friends. And with Gray in particular, perhaps, someday, something more.

Late one night, Gray and Mallory are summoned urgently to the home of Lady Adler, a patron of Gray’s undertaking business, and they assume there’s been a death in the household. But instead, they arrive in the midst of a seance with a ghost demanding Gray’s presence. The ghost is Lady Adler’s former maid, who had gone missing but now requests that Gray investigate her murder. Although Gray and Mallory are skeptical, they agree to look into the matter, whether she’s dead or alive. But unsure if there’s been a murder or not, unable to call out the medium as a fraud, and concerned for the fate of the young maid, Gray and Mallory are once again drawn into a mystery much more puzzling–and more dangerous–than it first seems.

An Ordinary Sort of Evil, book #5 in the excellent A Rip Through Time series, delivers the twisty mystery and terrific character moments that we’ve come to expect over the course of these books.

A quick explanation of the story so far: Mallory Mitchell, a Canadian homicide detective from the 21st century, stumbles through a time anomaly while visiting family in Edinburgh and finds her consciousness now inhabiting the body of a 20-year-old housemaid in Victorian Scotland. This housemaid words for Dr. Duncan Gray, an undertaker and scientist who assists the Edinburgh police with unusual cases, which is probably the best of all possible situations for Mallory to have landed in.

As the series progresses, Mallory adapts to her new life, and after sharing the truth about herself with Duncan and a few other close connections, she’s able to apply her detective skills in this new, strange world. Five books into the series, Mallory is established as Duncan’s assistant, although with her modern-day detective and forensic skills, she takes the lead for their investigations. Meanwhile, Mallory and Duncan’s professional closeness and personal friendship seems to be developing into something more, and yet Victorian standards related to class, race, and gender threaten to put an end to any deeper relationship before it can even start.

As An Ordinary Sort of Evil opens, Mallory and Duncan are summoned to a wealthy patron’s home in the middle of the night — not to investigate a murder, but because a ghost summoned during a seance has asked for Duncan by name. Or so the medium says: She claims that a maid working in the patron’s household has contacted her, and wants Duncan to investigate her murder. The problem is, the maid was last seen alive and well, and was believed to have left for new opportunities. Mallory and Duncan scoff at the spiritualism fad, but when a body turns up, they’re immersed once more in an investigation, trying to determine if this is in fact the missing maid, what happened to her, and how someone at the seance could have known of her death.

It’s an ordinary sort of evil. The kind people do every day, and never think twice. It’s just how you get ahead in life.

Once again, Kelley Armstrong skillfully blends an intriguing, unpredictable murder mystery with Mallory’s fish-out-of-water existence in a time not her own, while also keeping the character development moving forward and building upon everything that’s happened so far in the series. That’s a tough order to fill, but this author makes it work, and then some.

One of the delights of these books is seeing Mallory’s adjustment to life in Victorian times. For propriety’s sake, she must pose as Duncan’s subordinate and defer to him — publicly, at least — on matters in which she’s the expert. Behind closed doors, however, she lets loose and allows her outspoken nature to break free, which makes for all sorts of entertainment as we readers get to enjoy her anachronistic sass and snark.

I raise a slow middle finger.

“Too bad I do not know what that means,” he says. “I am certain, though, that it expresses your agreement with my point.”

The mystery in An Ordinary Sort of Evil is highly entertaining and not at all straightforward. I often thought I had a sense of how things might unfold; each time, I was wrong. Following Mallory and Duncan’s investigation is pure delight — I loved seeing how the clues and false leads and various suspects and their actions all come together by the end.

As for the characters and their relationships, things do progress in ways that will make readers of this series very happy, but there’s plenty of room for even more developments… and that’s all I’ll say about that!

A Rip Through Time continues to entertain and offer thrills and mysteries to puzzle through, and I can’t wait for more. Highly recommended — but do start at the beginning of the series! You won’t want to miss a thing.

Next up: A newly announced novella, to be release later this year. I absolutely plan to read it — I’ll need a Mallory fix while waiting for the next book in the series.

Brawlers & Burglars
Release date: December 1, 2026

For more in this series:
A Rip Through Time
The Poisoner’s Ring
Disturbing the Dead
Schemes & Scandals (novella)
Death at a Highland Wedding
Kirkyards & Kindness (novella)

9May2026

Quick Take: The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: The Buffalo Hunter Hunter
Author: Stephen Graham Jones
Publisher: Saga Press
Publication date: March 18, 2025
Length: 448 pages
Genre: Horror / historical fiction
Source: Library
Rating:

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Only Good Indians comes a tale of the American West, writ in blood.

This chilling historical novel is set in the nascent days of the state of Montana, following a Blackfeet Indian named Good Stab as he haunts the fields of the Blackfeet Nation looking for justice.

It begins when a diary written in 1912 by a Lutheran pastor is discovered within a wall in 2012. What is unveiled is a slow massacre, a nearly forgotten chain of events that goes back to 217 Blackfeet dead in the snow, told in the transcribed interviews with Good Stab, who shares the narrative of his peculiar and unnaturally long life over a series of confessional visits.

This is an American Indian revenge story, captured in the vivid voices of the time, by one of the new masters of literary horror, Stephen Graham Jones.

Unpopular opinion time: This story of a vampire seeking revenge for the massacre of his people, the Blackfeet of Montana, should have been right up my alley… and yet, I had to force myself to stick with it and slog my way through to the end.

This book has an endless number of rave reviews, including from media sources and bloggers I tend to align with. And yet, it just didn’t work for me.

There’s a great premise: A newly discovered diary left behind by a Lutheran pastor in 1912 reveals a shocking set of confessions from a Blackfeet named Good Stab. Good Stab seeks out Arthur Beaucarne to share the story of his unnaturally long life, his transformation into a vampire, and the punishments he’s meted out to those he deems responsible for murdering his people.

And yet, I found myself disengaged and frustrated throughout much of the book. There are some compelling and horrifying set pieces, some very moving interludes as Good Stab recounts what’s happened to the Blackfeet and to the buffalos… and yet, the story he tells is full of names, places, and incidents that loop and cross, sometimes dropping important pieces of information into long bits of a tale so that they get more or less buried. I found it confusing to track the who and how and why of many of the developments, and ultimately ended up caring far less than I should have, with what should have been big revelations falling flat.

I’m definitely in the minority on this one. By the end, I just wanted it all to be over.

Sigh. Not a book for me.

10Apr2026

First Lines Friday 4/10/2026

Posted in Fun and Whimsy by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

First Lines Friday is a weekly feature for book lovers created by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?

Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page.
Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first.
Finally… reveal the book!

This week, I’m featuring lines from a book I’ll be reading with my book group later this spring:

Lucrezia is taking her seat at the long dining table, which is polished to a watery gleam and spread with dishes, inverted cups, a woven circlet of fir. Her husband is sitting down, not in his customary place at the opposite end but next to her, close enough that she could rest her head on his shoulder, should she wish; he is unfolding his napkin and straightening a knife and moving the candle toward them both when it comes to her with a peculiar clarity, as if some coloured glass has been put in front of her eyes, or perhaps removed from them, that he intends to kill her.

So what’s the book?

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell
Knopf Publishing Group
Release date: September 6, 2022
355 pages

Synopsis:

The author of award-winning Hamnet brings the world of Renaissance Italy to jewel-bright life in this unforgettable fictional portrait of the captivating young duchess Lucrezia de’ Medici as she makes her way in a troubled court.

Florence, the 1550s. Lucrezia, third daughter of the grand duke, is comfortable with her obscure place in the palazzo: free to wonder at its treasures, observe its clandestine workings, and devote herself to her own artistic pursuits. But when her older sister dies on the eve of her wedding to the ruler of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio, Lucrezia is thrust unwittingly into the limelight: the duke is quick to request her hand in marriage, and her father just as quick to accept on her behalf.

Having barely left girlhood behind, Lucrezia must now enter an unfamiliar court whose customs are opaque and where her arrival is not universally welcomed. Perhaps most mystifying of all is her new husband himself, Alfonso. Is he the playful sophisticate he appeared to be before their wedding, the aesthete happiest in the company of artists and musicians, or the ruthless politician before whom even his formidable sisters seem to tremble?

As Lucrezia sits in constricting finery for a painting intended to preserve her image for centuries to come, one thing becomes worryingly clear. In the court’s eyes, she has one duty: to provide the heir who will shore up the future of the Ferranese dynasty. Until then, for all of her rank and nobility, the new duchess’s future hangs entirely in the balance.

Full of the beauty and emotion with which she illuminated the Shakespearean canvas of Hamnet, Maggie O’Farrell turns her talents to Renaissance Italy in an extraordinary portrait of a resilient young woman’s battle for her very survival.

Sound like something you’d enjoy?

Happy Friday! Wishing everyone a great weekend!

8Mar2026

Book Review: A Ghastly Catastrophe (Veronica Speedwell, #10) by Deanna Raybourn

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: A Ghastly Catastrophe
Series: Veronica Speedwell, #10
Author: Deanna Raybourn
Publisher: Berkley
Publication date: March 3, 2026
Length: 336 pages
Genre: Historical fiction / mystery
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley
Rating:

Veronica and Stoker are practically dying for a new adventure but when their wish is granted, they find themselves up against a secret society and a darkly seductive duo in this landmark historical mystery from beloved New York Times bestselling and Edgar Award–nominated author Deanna Raybourn.

When the corpse of an entitled young man is found entirely drained of blood in a carriage next to Highgate Cemetery, Veronica’s interest is piqued. And then a second victim is found, his death made to look like a suicide, and Veronica and her intrepid beau, Stoker, know the hunt is on. The two men share one link: they were both members of a society so secretive that only a singular mention of it can be found anywhere.

Thirsty for more clues, Veronica and Stoker hear that a young Roma boy may know more about their first victim, but the only way to the boy is through an old acquaintance of Stoker’s, Lady Julia Brisbane. Lady Julia and her dashing husband, Nicholas, occasionally track down murderers and are only too happy to help. But as it becomes clear the secret society is a dangerous sect looking to entice immortality seekers, Veronica and Stoker find themselves ensnared by a decidedly more sinister couple.

The professed leader of the society claims to be a creature of the night; his partner practices witchcraft and they both fancy themselves emissaries of the otherworldly. Just as Veronica and Stoker get closer to learning the true purpose of the society and unraveling this macabre mystery, another body turns up, and they quickly discover they’ve gone from being the hunters to the hunted. . . .

After a two-year gap, we return to the world of Veronica Speedwell — and this latest installment offers just the mix of danger, snark, and Victorian manners as we’ve come to expect.

I intuited Stoker’s restlessness as clearly as I felt the itch in my own blood, and the cause of it was the same as my own: we wanted a mystery. It had been nearly six months since our last investigation, and while we were certainly not professionals, we had fallen into the habit of murder — the sleuthing and not the committing, I hasten to add.

Veronica and Stoker are drawn into yet another murder mystery thanks to their association with both a Scotland Yard detective and a disgraced woman journalist. In this new adventure, two men have been found dead under suspicious circumstances, and their powerful families are keeping the details hushed up. As Veronica and Stoker learn, one man — Maurice Quincey — was found dead in a carriage, drained of blood and with puncture wounds on his neck, while the other — Jameson Harkness — supposedly accidentally fell from a balcony to his death.

Do those names ring a bell? How about when I mention two other key figures, Seward Johnson and Horace Von Hilsing?

If you suspect an homage to Dracula, you’re correct! As Veronica notes at the outset, a certain Bram Stoker not only seems to have appropriated her lover’s name as his own surname, but has obviously gotten access to Veronica’s private case notes. The nerve!

Veronica and Stoker are scientists, not particularly inclined to believe that vampires are real. But as occult mementos, a secret society, and a pair who seem to have inexplicable powers of control and persuasion come to light as part of the investigation, it’s harder to believe that there may not in fact be something otherworldly at play.

As always, it’s a delight to spend time with Veronica and Stoker, whose banter and flirtation are as entertaining as ever. The mystery itself is oodles of fun, with all sorts of shenanigans that put our heroes in danger, but also give them the opportunity to get the best of any situation, something they absolutely excel at doing.

Fans of author Deanna Raybourn’s Lady Julia Grey series will enjoy seeing Lady Julia pop up in A Ghastly Catastrophe. I have not read those books myself, but I’ve been wanting to, and now I’m even more determined to pick up the first book in the series, Silent in the Grave, during the current year.

The Veronica Speedwell books can be counted on for their clever mysteries, quippy dialogue, and excellent chemistry between the lead characters. Here’s hoping there are many more adventures yet to come for Veronica and Stoker!

4Mar2026

Book Review: A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: A Town Like Alice
Author: Nevil Shute
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Publication date: 1950
Length: 262 pages
Genre: Historical fiction
Source: Purchased
Rating:

Jean Paget, a young Englishwoman living in Malaya, is captured by the invading Japanese and forced on a brutal seven-month death march with dozens of other women and children. A few years after the war, Jean is back in England, the nightmare behind her. However, an unexpected inheritance inspires her to return to Malaya to give something back to the villagers who saved her life. But it turns out that they have a gift for her as well: the news that the young Australian soldier, Joe Harman, who had risked his life to help the women, had miraculously survived. Jean’s search for Joe leads her to a desolate Australian outpost called Willstown, where she finds a challenge that will draw on all the resourcefulness and spirit that carried her through her war-time ordeals.

I first encountered A Town Like Alice at some point in the 1980s. The mini-series was a hit, people were swooning over the love story, and naturally, I had to know more, so I picked up the book. All these years later, I still remembered some of the basics, and was glad to have an excuse to revisit the story when my book group selected it for our February book.

One of author Nevil Shute’s best-known books, A Town Like Alice in some ways is two stories in one — or even three, if you count the framing device. An aging British lawyer, Noel Strahan, becomes the trustee of one of his clients, and in the years soon after the end of World War Two, learns that the main benefactors of his client’s will have both died. The inheritance now goes to the remaining heir, a young woman named Jean Paget, for whom the estate will remain in trust until she inherits fully at age 35.

When Noel tracks down Jean, he finds her working in London as a shorthand typist for a leather goods company. At age 26, she’s eligible to receive a yearly stipend from the trust — enough to allow her to quit her job and enjoy herself, within reason. What Jean most wants to do is to build a well in a small village in Malaya.

As Noel gets to know Jean, he learns the extraordinary story of her wartime experiences. Jean had been living in Malaya at the time, and as she and other women and children were about to be evacuated, they were captured by the Japanese army instead. Lacking a prison camp for women, the Japanese officers in charge sent them onward to a different destination, and then another, resulting in months of endless marching in horrible conditions. Jean witnessed more than half of her fellow prisoners dying along their brutal march. At one of the lowest points, she encountered an Australian prisoner named Joe Harman, whose remarkable courage led to a moment of horror that left Jean scarred and grief-stricken.

Jean narrates her experiences to Noel in what is the book’s most powerful and moving set of chapters, evoking the terror and torment of what she’d lived through, while also making clear why she feels the need to return to Malaya.

From there, the second half of the book takes on a very different focus. In Malaya, Jean learns that Joe did not die, as she’d believed, but survived and eventually returned home to Australia. Jean can’t rest without seeing Joe again, and thus begins a complicated set of travel itineraries during which Jean and Joe keep missing each other.

Eventually reunited, a love story blooms… and Jean also discovers herself drawn to the rather dismal outback town near Joe’s cattle station. It’s a dull, run-down place with little to attract anyone who doesn’t need to be there. But Jean is inspired, and devotes herself to bringing the little town to life, creating opportunities for young women to work and thrive there, and before long, making it a place where people actually want to be.

The book can be seen as portraying two very different stories — a horrific war story, and a hopeful story about building a community based on sheer determination — and yet, it’s an interesting mirror to the structure of Jean’s life, which definitely also has a before and an after. Jean’s life story in some ways seems to end with the end of the war. She’s safe, she’s working a steady if not especially exciting job, and she doesn’t seem to have anything particular ahead of her. And then, suddenly, there’s the after: She returns to Malaya, she travels to Australia, and finds both love and a meaningful future when she never truly expected either one.

Joe and Jean’s love story is quite special. They crossed paths for only a few days during the war, but left an indelible mark on one another. Their reunion years later is sweet and tentative. They believe they’ll want to be together, but they don’t actually have any real-world shared experiences upon which to build a life, apart from those intense few days. And yet, there is something real pulling them together, both attraction and connection, so that they’re able to quickly establish that they do belong in each others’ lives.

I found A Town Like Alice to be a beautiful, inspiring read. Joe and Jean both exhibit extraordinary bravery. Jean’s spirit is full of hope and charm once she has a vision of what their dull little town could be, and I admired her dedication and commitment to making a life with Joe work.

The book isn’t perfect, of course. Published in the 1950s, the attitude toward Australia’s indigenous population can be very off-putting. References about “Abos” and “boongs” abound, and when asked how many people work at a particular station, the answer often is separated out into the number of men (meaning white) and the number of “Abos”. Reading this book today, the racism and derogatory language is disturbing. Still, as a representation of the social climate in that place and time, I’m guessing it’s pretty accurate.

Overall, I’m very happy to have had my book group as motivation to pick up A Town Like Alice again after so many years. I found myself completely absorbed, and really loved reading it.

The only other Nevil Shute book I’ve read is On the Beach, but I’m eager to read more. As of now, I have Pastoral, The Breaking Wave, and The Far Country on my list of possibilities. Recommendations are welcome!

Did you know?

A Town Like Alice has been adapted twice:

Movie, 1956 — available via Prime Video

Mini-series, 1981 — does not appear to be streaming anywhere at the moment, although I did find a few uploads via YouTube that I may check out.

25Feb2026

Book Review: Where the Girls Were by Kate Schatz

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Where the Girls Were
Author: Kate Schatz
Publisher: The Dial Press
Publication date: March 3, 2026
Length: 368 pages
Genre: Historical fiction
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley
Rating:

In this electrifying and heartfelt historical coming-of-age novel, set against the tumultuous backdrop of 1960s San Francisco, a pregnant teenager reckons with womanhood and agency after being sent to a home for unwed mothers.

It’s 1968, and the future is bright for seventeen-year-old Elizabeth “Baker” She’s the valedictorian of her high school, with a place at Stanford in the fall and big dreams of becoming a journalist. But the seductive free-spirited San Francisco atmosphere seeps into her carefully-planned, strait-laced life in the form of a hippie named Wiley. At first, letting loose and letting herself fall in love for the first time feels incredible. But then, everything changes.

Pregnancy hits Baker with the force of whiplash—in the blink of an eye, she goes from good girl to fallen woman, from her family’s shining star to their embarrassing secret. Sent to a home for unwed mothers, Baker finds herself trapped in an old Victorian house packed with a group of pregnant girls who share her shame and fear. As she reckons with her changing body, lack of choice, and uncertain future, Baker finds unexpected community and empowerment among the “girls who went away.”

Where the Girls Were is a timely unearthing of a little-known moment in American history, when the sexual revolution and feminist movement collided with the limits of reproductive rights—and society’s expectations of women. As Baker finds her strength and her voice, she shows us how to step into your power, even when the world is determined to keep you silent.

Where the Girls Were is a powerful look at the changing world of young women in the late 1960s, centered on high school senior Baker — the bright, ambitious daughter of a suburban family that hides financial woes behind a veneer of pool parties and social engagements and neighborhood clubs. Baker is her parents’ pride and joy — until she ends up pregnant after her first sexual encounters with a hippie named Wiley.

Devastated and in denial, Baker first attempts to access an abortion through an underground provider, but is scared off before she can go through with it. When she finally confesses to her parents, her mother secures her a spot at a home for unwed mothers in San Francisco, where she’ll stay for the remainder of her pregnancy. Meanwhile, Baker’s family concocts a cover story for her: She’ll be spending a semester in Paris, before returning in the spring to start at Stanford.

At the home, Baker is surrounded by other pregnant teens, all with their own stories to tell. The girls are not allowed outside except for supervised walks — for which they put on fake wedding rings, so as not to scandalize the neighbors. The longer Baker stays at the home, the more she comes to understand about her limited choices, and how little control she has over her own body or decisions about her baby.

“We can tell you’re confused. But let me remind you: you got yourself into this situation. We are helping you out of it. Do you realize how lucky you are to be here?”

Where the Girls Were offers a spot-on depiction of the convergence of 1950s morality and 1960s rebellion. Baker’s world is full of political unrest and anti-war protests and the “turn on, tune in, drop out” mentality, but the free love vibe doesn’t last once pregnancy roles around. And how free can these girls truly be without safe access to either birth control or abortion rights? Baker and the other girls at the home have their choices taken away from them by their families, who seem to value appearance and saving face much more than the feelings or well-beings of their daughters.

Because what she realizes as she talks to the other girls is that she’s not as isolated as she’d believed. She’s not the only one to feel this, to have this happen. Other girls are angry and ashamed. Other girls are embarrassed. Other girls are full of rage. Other girls know how she feels, even if they don’t talk much.

I found Where the Girls Were to be a compelling, moving read, with a realistic depiction of the era and with a main character to truly care about. We get to really know Baker and understand her struggles and her inner life. Seeing her navigate life in the home and figure out how to stand up to those who try to manipulate her is quite inspiring.

At the same time, it’s shocking to see how little information even a well-educated girl like Baker has. Yes, she knows the basics about how pregnancies come about, but she has no information about pregnancy itself — how it progresses, what to expect, what labor entails — not to mention a very fundamental lack of knowledge about how to avoid pregnancy other than being a “good girl”.

Two very minor quibbles to note: First, I wish the ending had been a little less ambiguous. I can understand why the author chose to leave the story where it ends, but I would have appreciated a more definite wrap-up. (Not going into details here in order to avoid spoiling anything…) Second (and this is largely my own reading pet peeve, not necessarily a flaw in the book), I tend not to like when books introduce a large group of characters at once. Here, Baker meets all the girls at the home in one big round of introductions, and perhaps as a result, all but a few particular girls seem to blend together. I wished for a bit more to distinguish some of the girls who figured more as background characters.

Those quibbles aside, I enjoyed this book very much, and strongly recommend it for anyone who enjoys historical fiction, women’s history, and/or fiction set during the 1960s. The story and main character are both terrific and make a big impression.

Reading note: This is actually my 2nd book within a year about a home for unmarried pregnant girls set during roughly the same time period. The other, Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix, is a horror novel, but the two books share many of the same themes and feature girls in similar circumstances. Really interesting to compare and contrast!

For further reading: In the author’s notes, she references a non-fiction book, The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade by Ann Fessler. Sounds fascinating! I’ve added this to my TBR, and hope to track down a copy. Find out more, here.

29Jan2026

Book Review: Code Name Hélène by Ariel Lawhon

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Code Name Hélène
Author: Ariel Lawhon
Publisher: Doubleday
Publication date: March 31, 2020
Length: 451 pages
Genre: Historical fiction
Source: Library
Rating:

BASED ON THE THRILLING REAL-LIFE STORY OF SOCIALITE SPY NANCY WAKE, comes the newest feat of historical fiction from the New York Times bestselling author of I Was Anastasia, featuring the astonishing woman who killed a Nazi with her bare hands and went on to become one of the most decorated women in WWII.

Told in interweaving timelines organized around the four code names Nancy used during the war, Code Name Hélène is a spellbinding and moving story of enduring love, remarkable sacrifice and unfaltering resolve that chronicles the true exploits of a woman who deserves to be a household name.

It is 1936 and Nancy Wake is an intrepid Australian expat living in Paris who has bluffed her way into a reporting job for Hearst newspaper when she meets the wealthy French industrialist Henri Fiocca. No sooner does Henri sweep Nancy off her feet and convince her to become Mrs. Fiocca than the Germans invade France and she takes yet another name: a code name.

As LUCIENNE CARLIER Nancy smuggles people and documents across the border. Her success and her remarkable ability to evade capture earns her the nickname THE WHITE MOUSE from the Gestapo. With a five million franc bounty on her head, Nancy is forced to escape France and leave Henri behind. When she enters training with the Special Operations Executives in Britain, her new comrades are instructed to call her HÉLÈNE. And finally, with mission in hand, Nancy is airdropped back into France as the deadly MADAM ANDRÉ, where she claims her place as one of the most powerful leaders in the French Resistance, armed with a ferocious wit, her signature red lipstick, and the ability to summon weapons straight from the Allied Forces.

But no one can protect Nancy if the enemy finds out these four women are one and the same, and the closer to liberation France gets, the more exposed she–and the people she loves–become.

After reading The Frozen River last year, I was excited when my book group picked Code Name Hélène as our January read. Ariel Lawhon is a gifted writer; it’s stunning to see how well she captures two vastly different historical periods in the two books of hers that I’ve read so far.

In Code Name Hélène, Lawhon tells the story of real-life heroine Nancy Wake, an Australian woman in her 20s living in Paris as war looms in Europe. Working as an occasional freelance writer, she enjoys her unrestrained life, with good friends, romantic flirtations, wine and good food and constant excitement. Her path veers toward a new, more serious direction when she travels to Vienna and then to Berlin to witness first-hand the dangers of the growing Nazi power.

Once war breaks out, Nancy’s life changes even more. Madly in love with her husband Henri and building a life with him in Marseille, Nancy finds herself alone once he’s called to the front lines. She decides she can’t just sit by and wait while people’s lives are destroyed, and becomes involved first as an ambulance driver, then as a member of the underground working to rescue those in danger from both Nazis and the Vichy collaborators in their midst.

Eventually, Nancy is forced to flee, and after a harrowing escape, ends up in England, where she’s recruited into a special operations unit and prepared for a mission back to France, where she and her teammates will be tasked with arming and organizing the French resistance fighters in advance of D-Day.

Told through alternating timelines, we first meet Nancy in 1944 as she’s about to jump out of a plane and parachute into occupied France. As this story moves forward, interwoven chapters take us back to 1936, when Nancy meets Henri and takes the first step on her journey toward becoming a spy and a fighter.

Nancy’s story is powerful and would feel incredible — as in, hard to believe — were it not for the fact that she really lived the life described in Code Name Hélène. The author’s notes at the end of the book identify her sources and explain places where she had to condense or alter details for artistic purposes. So, while it may feel like too much to accept that one young woman did all the things described in this book, it’s clear that Ariel Lawhon pulled from the historical record to the greatest extent possible.

In terms of the reading experience, Code Name Hélène is phenomenal. It took me a few beats to really warm to the story (more on this in a moment), but within the first quarter or so of the book, I was hooked, and couldn’t put it down. I simply had to know what happened to Nancy, Henri, and all of her various friends and allies introduced throughout this story.

I did struggle with the writing, especially at the beginning, for several reasons. First, the opening scene has a few issues that pulled me out of the story before I could get invested. In one passage, Nancy tells us about her code name on this mission and notes that it’s sexist — which startled me, because I didn’t think “sexist” was a term in use at that time. (According to Wikipedia, the word “sexism” appears to have been coined in 1965.) Maybe that’s too picky of me — but surely a more time-appropriate description could have been used? Beyond that, in the dramatic scene leading up to Nancy’s jump from the airplane, she’s told to jump as they reach the drop zone — and she refuses to do so until she applies a fresh coat of her beloved red lipstick. Okay, perhaps the author was trying to find a memorable way to introduce us to the red lipstick that we see Nancy turning to for courage at key moments throughout the book — but it felt unrealistic to me that a serious operative would act that way in that particular moment.

Fortunately, the book gets better and better — and while, yes, there still were occasional moments that felt anachronistic to me, they bothered me less once I was fully absorbed in the narrative.

I will say, however, that the dual timelines didn’t work particularly well for me, and I think the story would have been stronger overall with a sequential chronology. Going from the big parachuting scene back to Nancy drinking in a Paris bar in 1936 is jolting — and it takes much too long before we learn how and when Nancy was trained for this mission, which left me with a constant question about how she was qualified to do the things we see her doing, and even whether this was her first, tenth, or hundred mission.

Quibbles aside, Code Name Hélène is a truly powerful book that tells the story of a remarkable woman, and I’m very glad to have read it. My quibbles keep me from giving this book a full 5-star rating, but at the same time, I would absolutely recommend it to anyone who enjoys historical fiction about strong, dynamic women. Fans of The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah may also appreciate Code Name Hélène; there’s some overlap in terms of subject matter and setting, which made reading Code Name Hélène especially poignant and resonant for me.

I’ve now read two books by Ariel Lawhon, and I’m eager for more. As of now, I think my next book by this author will be I Was Anastasia — if you’ve read it, let me know your thoughts!

To learn more about the real Nancy Wake:

Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Wake (WARNING: Do not visit this page before finishing Code Name Hélène!)
Nancy Wake’s autobiography was published in 1985: The White Mouse
There’s even a graphic novel about Nancy Wake! Nancy Wake: Fearless Spy of World War II

Purchase links: Amazon – Audible audiobook – Bookshop.org – Libro.fm
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