Review: The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place by Julie Berry

Title: The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place

Author: Julie Berry

Published: 2014, Roaring Brook Press

Genre: Historical Fiction, Comedy

Audience: Middle Grade

Source: Library
Find it: Goodreads


The seven students of St. Etheldreda’s School for Young Ladies thought that their Sunday dinner was like any other. They expected to eat their poor meal of buttered bread and hot beans while their headmistress and her brother ate veal. But this Sunday does not turn out as expected, as, upon eating the veal, both Mrs. Plackett and Mr. Godding fall to the ground, dead.

The unexpected turn of events has left the girls in an anxious state. Rather than being concerned about the fate of their headmistress and her brother, or even about who would have poisoned them and why, the girls instead worry about their own situations. Once the village of Ely and their parents find out about Mrs. Plackett’s demise, they’re sure to be sent away to their homes or other boarding schools, never to see each other again. So the girls make a pact: they’ll bury Mrs. Plackett and Mr. Godding and find a way to keep the school going with no one the wiser.

To put it simply, The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place is a farce. This is a story of exaggerations and is frequently tongue-in-cheek. The story takes place in Ely, England in 1900 and focuses on the absurdity and hilarity that ensues as seven friends try to cover up their headmistress’ murder. The seven leading ladies of this tale are: Dear Roberta, who is both sweet and genuinely good, Disgraceful Mary Jane, who enjoys the power of seduction, Dour Elinor, who fascinated with all aspects of mortality, Dull Martha, who is a bit slow on the uptake, Pocked Louise, who harbors a love of science, Smooth Kitty, who is the leader of their little band, and Stout Alice, whose heart belongs to the stage.

Underlying improbable situations, however, are some worthwhile messages, including that of sisterhood. As one of the girls points out, none of them have any sisters. The friendships they’ve formed with each other are therefore that much more powerful, that much more important to them. Theirs is a sisterhood formed not simply by blood, but by choice, and it’s one they’re willing to do just about anything to keep intact.

Woven within the farcical elements is a more typical murder mystery story. Who killed Mrs. Plackett? Why? Are the girls themselves in danger? Despite the small town atmosphere that Ely has, Berry has created a story full of red herrings, where nothing is cut and dry, and where each person remains a suspect until the big reveal. The mystery aspect is very well done, and combined with the humor it makes for a very readable, entertaining book.

The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place is a delight to read in novel form, but it is something I could see becoming even stronger if told on the stage. The characters could become more distinct, the humor more pronounced, the wit that much more apparent if made into a play.

As a book, though, it still provides an absolutely memorable reading experience. Berry has created a story that believably pulls together elements of historical fiction, farce, murder mystery, and sisterhood. It’s absolutely worth reading.

Rating: 4.5 stars

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Review: The Cure for Dreaming by Cat Winters

The Cure for Dreaming by Cat Winters

Published: October 14, 2014, Amulet Books

Genre: Young Adult Historical Fiction, Paranormal

Source: Publisher via Netgalley

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Olivia Mead’s life in 1900 Oregon is slowly but inexorably undergoing a sort of social turmoil. A number of states have already granted women the right to vote, and, although a recent vote again repudiated their hopes for suffrage, the fact that the presidential election is upcoming and women from other states have equal rights has kept the campaign going strong. Livie is interested in the efforts, but doesn’t necessarily consider herself to be a full-blown suffragist.

That all changes when her father, after hearing how easily she was hypnotized at a local show, hires the hypnotist to transform her into the perfect domestic woman. But the hypnotist slightly alters her father’s request; instead of giving Livie the ability to see the world as her father and anti-suffragists think it should be, he tells her to see the world as it truly is. Now Livie has the ability to see the good and evil in people, and to see how the lack of women’s rights is causing her fellow females to literally fade away. Far from turning Livie into a model woman, her father’s wishes make Livie a rebel who is no longer content to allow things to remain the way they’ve always been.

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Review: Lies We Tell Ourselves by Robin Talley

Lies We Tell Ourselves by Robin Talley

Published: September 30, 2014, Harlequin Teen

Genre: Young Adult Historical Fiction, LGBT

Source: Publisher via Netgalley

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I can’t shake the feeling someone’s been lying to me all along. Because they don’t think I’m smart enough to understand the truth.

I’ve had enough.

It’s time I figured out the truth for myself.

Along with a few other students considered to be the crème de la crème of Johns, the all-black high school for Davisburg, Virginia, Sarah Dunbar is enrolled to attend her senior year at Jefferson, the previously all-white high school. No one thought that school integration would be easy, as the white people of Davisburg have spent five years fighting against the Supreme Court’s desegregation laws. Sarah, her younger sister Ruth, and a few of their friends know that desegregation is going to be tough and potentially dangerous, but that knowledge doesn’t prevent them from supporting the NAACP’s cause, and fighting for the right to be a part of the first school integration in Virginia.

But there’s a big difference between taking a stance on an issue on a theoretical basis and then enduring the consequences of that stance on a very real level.

Among the more vocal of the desegregation opponents is the editor of the town’s local newspaper, who happens to be the father of Linda Hairston, a senior of Jefferson High. Linda knows that integration is wrong, because that’s all she’s been told her entire life. And nothing in her life thus far has forced her to think otherwise.

But witnessing the atrocities that the black students endure from her fellow classmates and becoming acquainted with Sarah makes Linda begin to question her firmly entrenched beliefs.

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Review: Prisoner of Night and Fog by Anne Blankman

Prisoner of Night and Fog by Anne Blankman

Series: Prisoner of Night and Fog, #1

Published: 2014, Balzer + Bray

Genre: Young Adult Historical Fiction

Source: Library

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A dull buzzing sounds in her ears. If she and her people were mistaken about the Jews, then they were mistaken about everything. Without that screw, the entire machine would eventually break down. She felt a sob rise in her throat, and had to swallow it down. Uncle Dolf and Papa couldn’t be wrong, could they?

The past decade has been a pretty charmed one for Gretchen Müller. After witnessing first-hand the hunger, insecurity, and hopelessness that pervaded the German people following its defeat in World War I, Gretchen’s family started regaining hope through the efforts of the up-and-coming National Socialist Party, led by her father’s war comrade. Their loyalty to this new party came at a cost - her father’s life - but, ever since Gretchen’s father died in service to Adolf Hitler, the Müllers have been take care of and respected. Gretchen lovingly refers to Hitler as her uncle and is proud to support his causes.

Until suddenly she finds that she’s not. Her awakening starts with the sight of her brother and his friend brutally attacking a Jewish man simply for being present, and continues as she meets a young Jewish reporter and realizes that he isn’t all that different from her after all. Soon Gretchen realizes that all the truths she’s held dear are little more than a lie, and she’s determined to no longer contribute to the National Socialist Party’s cause. But deciding to rebel is one thing - actually rebelling is a whole other challenge.

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Review: Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi

 
Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi
Published: 2014, Riverhead Books
Genre: Historical Fiction, Retelling

Source: Won

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We’re friendly toward strangers because of a general belief (I don’t know where it comes from) that we’re born strangers and that the memory of how that feels never really leaves us.

Boy, Snow, Bird is being touted as a historical fiction retelling of “Snow White” set in 1950s America. The fact that it is a retelling is the primary reason I became interested in reading this story. The retelling, however, is more of an afterthought than anything else. Instead, Oyeyemi’s novel focuses on the trials and tribulations that three women face: Boy, her stepdaughter Snow, and her daughter Bird.

Boy Novak’s beauty is widely acknowledged, and she has grown up frequently admiring her reflection in mirrors. But Boy’s life is far from perfect. She has grown up without her mother, and her father makes a living catching rats. He also likes to abuse her in her spare time. So when Boy finds herself with an opportunity to leave her father for good, she takes it and travels up to the small New England town of Flax Hill.

In a small town where everyone seems to know everything about each other, Boy is treated with suspicion and envy. Until, that is, she befriends some of the locals and begins working at a bookstore. Still, it isn’t until Boy begins a serious relationship with Arturo Whitman, local scholar-turned-jeweler, that she finally begins to feel she may have a place in Flax Hill after all.

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Review: Curses and Smoke: A Novel of Pompeii by Vicky Alvear Shecter

Curses and Smoke: A Novel of Pompeii by Vicky Alvear Shecter

Published: May 27, 2014, Arthur A. Levine Books

Genre: Young Adult Historical Fiction

Source: From publisher via Netgalley

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In the Roman city of Pompeii during the late summer/early fall of 79 CE, both Lucia and Tages feel stifled by the lack of opportunities in their lives. The daughter of the owner of a minor gladiator school, Lucia has grown up with a few privileges. But she is weeks away from being married to a man decades older, one who isn’t likely to respect her love of learning or allow her to retain any autonomy back in Rome. Tages is the son of the medic at the gladiator school run by Lucia’s father. He spent many years away in Rome, only to return to live once more under an abusive master and witness his father’s troubling mental deterioration firsthand.

Lucia and Tag become reacquainted with one another, gradually sharing their fears, hopes, and dreams. But in addition to all the social and economic factors preventing them from openly declaring their love, they also must deal with the ominous tremors and changes in nature that herald the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

How can a story about the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and star-crossed young lovers present anything other than a page-turning plot? It’s a question I’m still pondering, after having finished Vicky Alvear Shecter’s latest work, Curses and Smoke. Perhaps the best way to put it is that this is a book that doesn’t quite reach its full potential, unfortunately.

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Review: All the Truth That’s in Me by Julie Berry

All the Truth That’s in Me by Julie Berry

Published: 2013, Viking Juvenile

Genre: Young Adult Historical Fiction

Source: Library

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I don’t know how to feel. I am weary of having to choose my facial expressions the way others can choose their words. For those who wish to read my face, every movement on its surface becomes a shout.

All the Truth That’s in Me hits every single right note for me as a lover of stories. Beautiful and experimental prose, a realistic, well-written protagonist with a host of emotional struggles, a subtle, sweet romance, situations that delve into major life truths. Honestly, I could just stop there. But this is me, so of course I’m going to go into some more detail.

Judith Finch has returned from the dead, more or less. She and her best friend disappeared from their village four years ago. Her friend’s body returned shortly thereafter, devoid of life, but no one knew what happened to Judith until she returned to two years later with a missing tongue.

Even if Judith’s tongue had been whole, she would still have had little reason to use it back in her Puritan town of Roswell Station. No one knows what happened to Judith, and no one wants to. They’d all just prefer to ignore her existence, including her own mother. And Judith has been fine with that arrangement, as she has problems even internally articulating her thoughts on what’s happened to her.

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Review: A Mad, Wicked Folly by Sharon Biggs Waller

A Mad, Wicked Folly by Sharon Biggs Waller

Published: 2014, Viking Juvenile

Genre: Young Adult Historical Fiction

Source: Library

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“This is why we all fight so hard. Not just for the vote, but for an equal opportunity in the world. A vote is a voice. I think you underestimate yourself, Queenie. This is your fight, same as it is mine.”

I confess that A Mad, Wicked Folly disappointed me. Once again, I fear that it was the hype that did me in. I mean, it sounded like such a perfect book for me: art, suffragettes, an Edwardian heroine unwilling to allow her gender determine her place in society, who strives to be better than her male peers. But ultimately it’s not as much of a “me” book as I had hoped.

As the daughter of an upper middle class family, Vicky Darling’s life is more or less set out for her. And as far as her parents are concerned, Vicky is in France to attend a finishing school. When they learn otherwise - that Vicky has not only been secretly taking art classes, but that she agreed to pose nude for her fellow artists - she is immediately sent home. The only way they see Vicky’s name (and their own) back in good graces once more is to focus on Vicky’s societal debut and arrange for her marriage.

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Review: Restless by William Boyd

Restless by William Boyd

Published: 2006, Bloomsbury

Genre: Adult Historical Fiction, Thriller

Source: Library

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I stood there in the kitchen, watching her staring across the meadow still searching for her nemesis and I thought, suddenly, that this is all our lives - this is the one fact that applies to us all, that makes us what we are, our common mortality, our common humanity. One day someone is going to come and take us away: you don't need to have been a spy, I thought, to feel like this.

I feel as though I’ve really been striking out with my book club’s latest picks. The worst part is there’s no real reason why I shouldn’t have enjoyed Restless. It’s not the typical type of book that I tend to read, but it’s still fairly interesting and well written. Some pretty substantial disconnect made it difficult for me to enjoy this very much, however.

Practically out of the blue, Sally Gilmartin tells her adult daughter Ruth that she is not who she’s claimed to be for the past few decades. She created a new life for herself as Sally Gilmartin, but she fears her efforts have begun to unravel before her very eyes. She’s worried that her past has finally caught up with the woman who was once Eva Delectorskaya, a woman of Russian heritage spying for England during World War II.

Of course, Ruth isn’t inclined to believe Sally at first, and instead thinks that her mother is going mad. But as Ruth continues to read her mother’s journal entries, she’s swept away by the story of a young Russian woman who, after her brother’s untimely death, decides to continue his work with a British spy agency. Known as Eve Dalton, Eva travels across many countries and takes advantage of her many skills and knowledge. But she learns that the dangers of this lifestyle may outweigh the positives.

I don’t have too much to say about this book. It’s clear that Boyd has done his research. There are many scenes from this book that seamlessly integrate real-life events and Boyd’s own characters. I thought that I knew a fair bit of World War II history, but apparently I not as much as I thought. Either that, or my knowledge is more specific to American involvement and certain overreaching concepts such as the Holocaust (which is very possible). Either way, I feel as though this is a story that would be better enjoyed by those who really know their World War II trivia (especially that as related to British involvement/espionage).

Both Eva/Sally and Ruth are fairly well-constructed characters. I didn’t have a problem with either of them, but neither did they summon up too many emotions for me. I was never more than mildly amused/surprised/worried by their situations. I might have had the potential to be more involved in Eva’s story, but I already knew that she ends up leaving her service and becoming Sally Gilmartin, so the element of surprise was missing. Not every story needs to leave the fates of its characters as a surprise, necessarily, but my lack of empathy for the characters coupled with the fact that I knew that Eva manages to survive made me a bit less involved.

There are also many loose threads. I can understand the loose threads surrounding Eva’s life; once she decides to be a spy, nothing in her life can ever be clear-cut again. I get that. And the main mystery surrounding her increased paranoia and decision to reveal her past to Ruth is resolved. I never felt as though Boyd put the same amount of effort into Ruth’s story, however. Her story functions as both a frame narrative and a second story to Eva’s. Outside of her learning about her mother’s history and helping her get a sense of resolution on things, not much is resolved about Ruth’s personal conflicts. Again, resolution is not always necessary, but the lack of any sort of resolution on Ruth’s made me wish that Boyd hadn’t devoted as much time to her characterization and life outside of her mother.

Restless is not a bad book. It’s just not my type of book. If you like your historical fiction and thrillers with a decent dash of spies and espionage thrown in, then this just might be the book for you.

Rating: 2 stars

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