This book is another one that has been sitting on my shelf for so long that I forgot what it was about. Upon rereading the summary I was re-intrigued. It mentions ghost stories, mysterious authors, references to Jane Eyre, and old mansions. I also remembered that The Thirteenth Tale got some acclaim when it came out, and there’s a BBC movie of the book. All good stuff.

The Thirteenth Tale is mainly told from aspiring biographer, Margaret Lea’s, perspective. Margaret has been summoned by the legendary author Vida Winter to write the aging author’s true life story. Throughout her rise to fame, Vida Winter has told her story to many biographers and journalists, but she has always made it all up. Now Vida is deathly ill and wishes to finally tell the truth, but Margaret cannot figure out why Vida would want a nobody like her to write her final biography. Margaret soon finds that she and Vida have a few things in common from their pasts, and their futures will be forever intertwined.

As mentioned, a lot of the book is from Margaret’s perspective, but the sections where Vida tells about her past are from Vida’s perspective. It is clear that Margaret has some secrets about her own past, but the driving force of the novel is figuring out Vida’s secrets. In fact, I found myself bored with Margaret’s sections unless she was finding out something about Vida. Margaret feels oddly secondary next to Vida, despite us following Margaret for most of the novel. I wish Margaret was more of her own character, but she feels more like a vehicle created to further Vida’s tale. Vida is an extremely interesting character, and I greatly enjoyed unraveling her secrets. Most of the other characters did not make an impression on me, but a few secondary characters (the Missus, John-the-dig, and Aurelius) got some time to shine.

The plot slowly reveals itself, but I felt like the answers to the many questions about Vida’s life came at a good pace. The atmosphere in the novel is great. Vida’s childhood home is sufficiently creepy and mysterious, Vida’s current home is dark and foreboding, and Margaret’s journeys elsewhere are explained clearly and beautifully. The only thing lackluster about the plot was the ending. Without saying too much, part of the ending felt a bit cheap. Throughout the novel you expect one thing, but the end reveals that that “thing” is not what it appeared to be. It did not go completely “dues ex machina,” but the explanation for one of the big secrets felt unsatisfying to me.

I would still give The Thirteenth Tale a high recommendation. It is a slow, quiet novel that puts forth a good mystery. To me, it felt like a mix between the movie Big Fish, Jane Eyre, and those creepy girls in The Shining, and in my opinion, that sounds pretty interesting.

I love this cover. I love it so much that I kept it on my shelf for a year and a half. OK, I’m joking, obviously. I have a lot of historical fiction on my bookshelves, but I never seem to be in the mood for one. But, when I finally pick one up (usually out of guilt of it sitting there so long), I almost always enjoy it.

As you may know, Jessie Burton also wrote The Miniaturist, which I also enjoyed and reviewed a while back. Like The Miniaturist, The Muse has lovable characters, tackles some tough social/societal issues, and has an enchanting and mysterious plot. In my opinion, The Miniaturist did not quite live up to its name since there was very little about the character who made the magical miniatures. The Muse does a better job of providing a clear narrative and the characters are crafted much more carefully.

The Muse focuses on two timelines. In 1967, we follow Odelle Bastien, a Trinidadian woman who has come to London to follow her dreams of being a writer. She finds a job as a typist at an art gallery, but living alone in London is often difficult for her as a single, working woman of color. Odelle meets her boss, Marjorie Quick, who is a woman with a mysterious past. In 1936, the Schloss family has moved to rural Spain for a fresh start. Olive Schloss is a headstrong young woman with an extraordinary painting ability. Olive’s family gets wrapped up in the Spanish Revolution when they employ the revolutionary siblings, Teresa and Isaac. Although many of these characters and details appear unrelated to each other, the plot intertwines nearly everything in a believable way.

If you have read both of Burton’s novels, you’ll see that she likes to leave gaps in her narratives. So, if you like to have everything tied up neatly at the end of the novel, beware! The Miniaturist left some large gaps in the plot and with characterization, which left me feeling unsatisfied as a reader. The Muse still leaves some minor details out, but it is much less ambiguous overall. The characters in The Muse were also a bit more fleshed out. Their pasts, ambitions, and feelings went beyond the page and the main plot line. There were a few events that were a little bit of stretch of reality (convenient meetings/connections between characters, relationships that did not progress realistically), but as I said earlier, most things came together in a way that made sense and felt natural. I loved a lot of what The Muse had to offer, and I particularly liked Odelle as a character. She was a strong female character, and her inner thoughts and feelings about her writing mirrored my own.

The Muse has a lot of strengths, and I wholeheartedly believe that Burton improved as a writer from her first novel to this one. However, if I had to give one critique about the novel, I would have to say that at times it felt like it was trying to do too much. It talked about colonialism, racism, sexism, historical events, the art world, writing, creating art in general, guilt, trauma, and the characters’ love lives to name a few off the top of my head. These are great subjects to take on, but few are explored in depth. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and it is realistic to some extent as these topics do often come up in the course of everyday life. We cannot always process every little part of these subjects as we go about our day, so should we expect a novel to untangle all of these parts of life? Perhaps not. Still, it is something to keep in mind if you plan on reading The Muse. You may be like me and feel like it spread itself a bit thin in trying to cover so many issues and topics. Despite this, I would still give this novel a very high recommendation. Even if you did not like The Miniaturist, The Muse is worth giving a chance.

I read The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters last year and loved it. It was a slow, character-focused tale with a touch of mystery and a good bit of slow-burning romance. The average rating on Goodreads has The Paying Guests at a 3.4 out of 5 stars, which surprised me. Still, I can definitely see the faults in the novel that might turn some readers off. So, when I saw the 3.5/5 average rating for The Little Stranger, I was not deterred. I had a feeling I would like The Little Stranger more than the average rating, and I was right.

World War II is over, and the British upper-class is feeling out of place and outdated. A local doctor, Dr. Faraday, strikes up a friendship with an old family named Ayres in Warwickshire. As the Ayres’s old mansion crumbles around them, the family tries to keep up their upper-class appearance. They keep a maid they cannot really afford, make what repairs to the house they can afford, and close up the many rooms they cannot keep up with. Dr. Faraday (our first-person narrator) falls in love with the family and their old home. He tries to help his friends as best he can, but when the family and their servants begin to experience supernatural occurrences, Dr. Faraday tries to keep them grounded. He provides logical explanations for the strange marks on the walls, creepy noises, and misplaced objects. Is there a ghost in the Ayres’s home, or is it something that can be explained away by science or medicine?

The biggest “con” to reading this book is that it is very, very slow to start. As I have said many times, I like slow books, but many people do not. So, fair warning, nothing really happens for a while besides some very British conversations, lots of tea drinking, and Dr. Faraday’s inner monologue. All of these things are done well, and it is easy to get a sense of all of the characters during this time. Just… don’t go in expecting the ghostly goodness to start any time soon. There are hints of course, but the paranormal stuff does not ramp up until about 100-200 pages from the end. Speaking of the ending, it is somewhat ambiguous. Is there a ghost? Is there a curse on the family? Or are all of the happenings merely a result of stressed and unstable minds? In my opinion, there is a chance that Dr. Faraday could be an unreliable narrator too, but I have not looked into whether other readers agree or disagree with me. The answers to all of the aforementioned questions may be pretty clear to you after the book ends, but some readers might also be unsatisfied with the ending as it does not tie things up conclusively. Again, just a warning.

For me, the pros outweighed the cons for this novel. The characters were great. They are not perfect. Often, they react badly but believably to an event. They make mistakes and have misunderstandings. Everyone feels like a realistic, three-dimensional person. Even the side characters feel as if they have their own lives off the page. And, despite the slowness of the plot, I think it was done well. Just when I started to forget about the paranormal stuff and got wrapped up in a side plot, something happened and surprised me. The strange occurrences got more and more frequent toward the climax until suddenly everything reached a fever pitch. The novel also discusses class hierarchy and life in post-WWII Britain, which adds a layer of realism and some more character depth. This is simply a well-written title that feels like a classic.

Even days after finishing, I still think about this novel. The characters are so vibrant, and I miss reading about them. I really enjoyed the everyday conversations and worries of the characters. I could probably read a whole novel about them just living their lives with no actual plot. I would give The Little Stranger 4.5/5 stars, as the beginning was just a little bit slow even for me. And, from what I hear, there may be a film adaptation of The Little Stranger this fall.

The atmosphere of Manhattan Beach put me in the mood to keep reading historical fiction. After seeing many people on the internet rave about The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, I picked it up. In my opinion at least, the hype is real and deserved.

In the 1950’s, Cuban-American Evelyn Ferrera gave up everything to go to Hollywood and become a star. She stopped speaking Spanish, married a man she did not love, dyed her hair blonde, and changed her name to Evelyn Hugo. She became a household name and a legendary star. But now Evelyn is nearly eighty. All of her old friends are gone, and she wants to come clean about her years of scandals and secrets. For some reason, she seeks out unknown magazine reporter Monique Grant to write her biography. Monique’s outlook and perception of her life will irreversibly change after she finds out she has a connection to the mysterious and beautiful Evelyn Hugo.

Wow, this book was good. This was another fairly atmospheric read. It felt very early Hollywood. It was glamorous, sexy, heartbreaking, romantic, and engrossing. The book gave a “behind the scenes” look at 19050’s through 1980’s Hollywood. You might think this book is just about rich people problems, (and it is to some extent) but it is so much more. Stars are actual people after all. Evelyn is such a complex and strong woman, but she has faults and makes mistakes. She falls down and pulls herself back up. Most of the side characters are also amazing, but some could use more development. Each of Evelyn’s husbands were interesting and often horrible, but they each served a purpose for Evelyn and made her character grow realistically.

The novel tries and succeeds in tackling tough subjects of the past as well as today’s social issues. Specifically, the novel is very LGBTQ+ oriented. People who were not heterosexual had a very hard time in old Hollywood. Being outed could easily ruin a career and/or get the person killed. There is also discussion on cultural identity, racism, sexism, sexuality and sex in general, self-confidence, and women’s control of their bodies. Somehow the novel touches on all of these things without being preachy and without slowly down the pacing.

This a brutally honest novel with a lot of heart. I laughed, cried, and could not put it down. I gave the novel five stars. This has been a great reading year for me so far, and I am still craving historical fiction for some reason!

On my recent trip to New York City, I went on a bookstore spree. One of my favorites, and the one with the most personal feel, was Astoria Bookshop. It was there that I picked up a signed copy of Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan. I didn’t go there for this specific book. I had heard of Manhattan Beach because it had some buzz around it, and it was longlisted for The Women’s Prize for Fiction. The reasons I bought it were that it was signed (despite not really knowing the author’s work) and I wanted to support the bookshop. As luck would have it, I also ended up loving the novel.

Manhattan Beach is a novel about life in New York around the time of WWII. The primary character is Anna Kerrigan, a girl who loves her father, her disabled sister, her mother, her eccentric aunt, and loves a little bit of adventure. The novel begins when Anna is a child. She follows her father around when he does business dealings, but she is too young to understand what his job exactly is. When he suddenly goes missing, Anna is heartbroken. She tries to forget all about her father, and for a few years, she is able to move on. Once Anna enters the workforce, she meets one of her father’s old associates, a gangster by the name of Dexter Styles. As Anna gets closer to Mr. Styles, she finds out many of her father’s secrets.

My advice for going into this novel is to know that it isn’t all about Anna. The narration is third-person, but often the focus skips to one character or another. Sometimes the narration seems omniscient. The plot is much bigger than Anna’s own life. Dexter clearly his own complicated affairs, and there’s a lot about Anna’s sister and how her disability affects everyone else. The novel touches on sexism during the time period and how race and disability were viewed. There is a lot covered in the novel, and sometimes, it felt a touch messy. The time period and setting feel honest and accurate though. The author mentions the extensive research she did during the writing process, but I am no expert myself. It feels very New York, and it feels very WWII-America. It is a slow read. It is very character-focused, but it was the perfect book for my mood when I read it. A very solid 4.5/5 stars from me.

World War I is over, but Europe is disillusioned. Frances Wright’s family was once wealthy, but her father died and left Frances and her mother with his debts to settle. This has left Mrs and Miss Wright with no choice but to rent out part of their family home for extra income. It is an insult to have people of the “clerk class” in their home, but the money is desperately needed and the renters– a young couple called Leonard and Lillian Barber– seem quite nice. Frances feels drawn to the couple, but she does not expect to get tangled up in their strange drama, all the while dealing with her own past.

I am new to Sarah Waters, but she sounded like an author I would like. I wanted to start with one of her other books (Fingersmith, perhaps), but I had a difficult time finding a large hardback edition of any of her other novels besides The Paying Guests. I’m a picky buyer, what can I say? The Paying Guests has a pretty low Goodreads rating, but I did not let that deter me, thankfully. I really enjoyed the novel even though it really isn’t something I would think I would enjoy. I was drawn in by the promise of a mystery, but it is really more of a romance.

A lot of complaints from Goodreads members seem to be that The Paying Guests is too long or too slow. I would actually agree to an extent. It is a chunky book and the plot moves slowly for a while. There is a lot of focus on Frances’ inner thoughts. While I do think that at least 100 pages could have been trimmed out, I found the book hard to put down. This was actually a stressful read. I felt on the edge of my seat many times. There would be a build-up to something, that something would happen, and then something would go wrong for the characters I was rooting for. There was a quiet tension throughout the novel that I greatly enjoyed. The characters were complex and I was very invested in what happened to them all. I actually really liked the ups and downs of the romance! There were twists too! I went into the novel knowing very little and it paid off.

Though not quite a thriller, I was engrossed in the novel from start to finish. My only complaint is that the ending wasn’t quite satisfying to me. This felt like a novel that just kept building and building tension so much that the ending would never measure up. And for me, it didn’t. I really couldn’t say what I wanted to happen or how I would prefer it to end though. For that reason and for it being a touch too long, I gave it a solid four out of five stars.