Goodreads: Seventeen-year-old Louisa Cosgrove longs to break free from her respectable life as a Victorian doctor’s daughter. But her dreams become a nightmare when Louisa is sent to Wildthorn Hall: labeled a lunatic, deprived of her liberty and even her real name. As she unravels the betrayals that led to her incarceration, she realizes there are many kinds of prison. She must be honest with herself – and others – in order to be set free. And love may be the key…

Imagine growing up in Victorian times with a brother who loathed you, a mother who wished you were more girly, and a father who dotes on you and leaves you verily unprepared for life after he is gone. We meet Lousia Cosgrove on her way to a position as a companion for a rich young lady. Her family hopes this will teach Louisa to give up on her thoughts of becoming a doctor like her late father and become more of a lady. In essence to become marriageable.

Instead of arriving at a mansion Louisa is admitted to a mental hospital called Wildthorn Hall. Louisa is told she is mad, that her name isn’t even Louisa Cosgrove. Her name is Lucy Childs. That her family sent her to Wildthorn to heal. To remember who she truly is so she can go home.

Louisa is rocked mentally and abused physically by the brutish matrons in Wildthorn, save for one. Elisa is generally nice to Louisa even though she still calls her “Miss Childs”.

Wildthorn is a creepy Gothic Victorian tale of forbidden love, lesbian themes and the hope as a woman to be more than a tea stirrer. To be more than a breeding tool that supervises how much sugar the household has used in the past month. Louisa dares to love, dares to have a dream and for that she is committed to an institution as mad.

The question remains, is Louisa mad or is this all a conspiracy so vile from her family that she herself cannot fathom the motives.

If you like Jane Eyre, or Wuthering Heights I do so believe you will love Wildthorn Hall.

FTC Disclosure: This digital book was given to me for a short period by Netgalley at behest of the publisher.

Goodreads: Italy, 1456. The Renaissance is in glorious bloom, an age of unbridled creativity, commerce, art, and innovation. One of the most colorful men of this astonishing time is Fra Filippo Lippi, equally revered as a painter and reviled as a rogue. A great artist, he serves Cosimo de’ Medici and the Catholic Church, creating masterpieces in celebration of God and His glory. A Carmelite monk, he acts as chaplain to the nuns of the Convent Santa Margherita—and it is here, behind the cloister walls, that he encounters the greatest temptation of his life.

Penniless and beautiful, young Lucrezia Buti has been driven to Santa Margherita more by poverty than piety. Mesmerized by Lucrezia’s flawless features, Lippi sees in her face the inspiration for countless Madonnas. With the help of his powerful friends and an unscrupulous prioress, he draws upon favors that will lead to dangerous consequences, and brings the young woman to his studio to serve as his model.

Painter and muse are soon united in an exhilarating whirl of artistic discovery. As weeks and months pass, a passionate love develops between the irascible artist and the young nun, resulting in a scandalous romance that threatens to destroy them even as it fuels some of Lippi’s greatest work. Their affair sparks anger, envy, and vengeance . . . and it will take a miracle of undying faith, unsurpassed beauty, and unfathomable love to save all that Lippi and Lucrezia cherish.

A gorgeous novel that brings together real and imagined characters from Italy’s rich history, The Miracles of Prato is a moving and unforgettable tale of desire and devotion, both sensual and spiritual, set in an extraordinary time and place when beauty, faith, and art were celebrated above all.

If there is one thing you may not know about me, it is that I love history. In any form. Fiction, is a big favorite because I can explore these eras that I love so much by following characters that may or may not have existed through the streets of whatever city the book is focused on.

Everyone has their favorite time periods, I have quite a few. The Miracles of Prato is set in one of my favorite periods. During the Medici era of young Italy. The monk painters were all the going rage and Fra Filippo Lippi was one of the most amazing of them all. He worked with his young muse Lucrezia to create many of his masterpieces.

The book is peppered with many appearances from a host of side characters who actually lived in the city at the time. I adored walking the streets of Florence. The prose was fantastic and the history so on point I began to wonder did a historian write the book! I was surprised to see that the co-authors worked so well together, one being a novelist and the other being a historian. I think it gave this book something extra.

If you like Carolly Erickson or Allison Weir you will love The Miracles of Prato.

FTC Disclosure: I received this book from the publisher via the fantabulous ladies at TLC Booktours. Check them out!

From GoodReads: Jennie’s connection with her twin brother, Toby, grew stronger after he died in 1864. Now Jennie must rely on her ability to communicate with the dead to find out what has happened to her beloved fiance, Will, while he was off at war. The army says he died honorably in battle. His brother confides that he became a violent criminal and died in a prison camp. Jennie begins to doubt that anyone is telling her the truth.

This intriguing combination of historical romance, paranormal thriller, and clever mystery is illustrated by bestselling artist Lisa Brown. The unique visuals originated from real Civil War daguerreotypes that were transformed into eerie mementos for Jennie’s scrapbook.

With the help of a spiritualist photographer, the spirit of her dead fiance, and the clues she discovers and keeps in her scrapbook, Jennie must put together the pieces of this mystery before she loses her home, her fortune, and possibly her life.

What a gem Sourcebooks Fire has in this book! Adele Griffin paints a thriller with words while Lisa Brown fills your head with lovely period costume adaptations. Jennie is a remarkable character and shares traits with some of the most formidable herione’s in literature. Orphaned and relying on creepy mean relatives for support. Penniless and degraded daily she has to seem to take it all in stride. Snubbed by her peers and when her fiance is killed in battle completely ignored by everyone and moved to an attic room. Jennie takes on the role of a spy.

As she moves through the book and finds out a little piece of the mystery at a time you must pace yourself to keep from flying through the pages. There are a lot of subtle nuances here you will miss if you speed read it. The ending is perfect although I didn’t imagine any of it. I missed a lot of clues I believe. I wouldn’t have survived spy school I dare say.

I think the ending will surprise you all I totally didn’t see it coming. If you enjoyed books like Hex Hall, A Graveyard Book, or A Certain Slant of Light you will enjoy Picture the Dead.

Abandoning her worldly life, traveling to a remote Wisconsin town in the dead of winter, trusting her future to a man she had never met – such was Catherine Land’s new beginning. But there was an ending in sight as well, an ending that would redeem the treachery ahead, justify the sacrifice, and allow her to start over yet again. That was her plan.” “For Ralph Truitt, the wealthy businessman who had advertised for “a reliable wife,” this was also to be a new beginning. Years of solitude, denial, and remorse would be erased, and Catherine Land, whoever she might be, would be the vessel of his desires, the keeper of his secrets, the means to recover what was lost. That was his plan.” Set just after the turn of the twentieth century, A Reliable Wife is the story of these two people, each plagued by a heart filled with anger and guilt, each with a destiny in mind. But neither anticipates what develops between them – the pent-up longings that Catherine discovers in this enigmatic man and the depth of her own emotional response; the joy Ralph experiences in giving Catherine the luxuries she has never known, his growing need for her, and a desire that he thought was long buried.

Every once in a while a book comes along. You start to read it and realize that the synopsis doesn’t exactly convey what you think you will find in the pages. You read on feeling a tad bit disappointed until the moment of epiphany when you realize it is more than you could ever have hoped it would be. That your illusions and forethought’s on the book are nothing compared to the actual book itself.

A Reliable Wife is a darkly woven tale of murder, grief, the most horrible things that we as humans do to each other on a daily basis and how that affects our world in small ways. I want to read this book all over again just to feel what Catherine, Ralph, and Antonio must have felt. I want to live in this book.

If you ever choose to read one book that I have reviewed on my blog, then please let it be this one. Goolrick is a modern master. He depicted the time he wrote in perfectly. His characters though flawed in their own right were written with perfection. The side characters had stories so bitter and amazing that even the smallest in this book moves you to feel.

Goolrick is pure genius and you will be overwhelmed with the amount of debauchery these people commit upon each other. Ralph Truitt is an amazing man and I wanted so badly for him to be real so that I could walk up to him, shake his hand and thank him for allowing me to read the most delicate secrets of his life.

If you haven’t read the book do it. If you have please tell me what you think as I am dying to talk about this book!

Other Reviews:
S. Krishna’s Books
My Friend Amy
Devourer of Books

“Will I never see you again either?” I asked, feeling as though I was about to jump off a high mountain peak and hope to land without hurting myself. That’s how impossible everything seemed at that moment, no matter what I did.
“Perhaps we will meet again,” Sasha said, softening his voice. “But you must see that it does not matter. You have so much ahead of you. It’s your choice now. Choose the future! Choose life!”

For Anastasia Romanov, life as the privileged daughter of Russia’s last tsar is about to be torn apart by the bloodshed of revolution. Ousted from the imperial palace when the Bolsheviks seize control of the government, Anastasia and her family are exiled to Siberia. But even while the rebels debate the family’s future with agonizing slowness and the threat to their lives grows more menacing, romance quietly blooms between Anastasia and Sasha, a sympathetic young guard she has known since childhood. But will the strength of their love be enough to save Anastasia from a violent death?

Inspired by the mysteries that have long surrounded the last days of the Romanov family, Susanne Dunlap’s new novel is a haunting vision of the life—and love story—of Russia’s last princess.

I started this book after reading first of Anastasia Romanov last year in Joy Preble’s Dreaming Anastasia. While Joy added a new element using the history but in a modern setting, Dunlap takes you back in a historical fiction novel. I was able to love Anastasia and all of her family immediately. I wanted to breeze through the pages, I had to physically pull myself out of the story and remind myself to slow down.

I am enamored and humbled by the story of this family and I felt like Dunlap has given me a secret knowledge of the family and their last days before the Bolshevik revolution. I have the same feeling at the end of this book as I did when I read Anne Frank’s Diary in the sixth grade. I felt that the 1900′s were a more modern time, Russia however despite the technologies available kept the ways of the 1800′s.

It had been said the princesses were spoiled but in fact they were raised not in decadence and richness. The girls had many duties and even had cold showers. The revolution in Russia is very comparable to the French revolution. Rumors and hunger seemed to be the start of the troubles.

The way the family was murdered was quite barbaric. I will not ruin that for you in case like me you are a bit fuzzy on the details of the Russian revolution.

This book is packaged as Young Adult but I didn’t feel as if I were reading YA. I think the hardest reviews to write are those of books you have dearly loved. This book will take a prized place in my favorite books list, I will be recommending it to teachers who are going over the Russian revolution. I cannot say enough that everyone should read this. I loved the writing style and the book was paced exactly right. The epilogue at the back explaining some more of the cruelties this family endured is also not to be missed.

“The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire is a sweeping historical novel of Mexico during the short, tragic, at times surreal, reign of Emperor Maximilian and his court. Even as the American Civil War raged north of the border, a clique of Mexican conservative exiles and clergy convinced Louis Napoleon to invade Mexico and install the Archduke of Austria, Maximilian von Habsburg, as Emperor. A year later, the childless Maximilian took custody of the two year old, half-American, Prince Agustín de Iturbide y Green, making the toddler the Heir Presumptive. Maximilian’s reluctance to return the child to his distraught parents, even as his empire began to fall, and the Empress Carlota descended into madness, ignited an international scandal. This lush, grand read is based on the true story and illuminates both the cultural roots of Mexico and the political development of the Americas.”

Mayo tells the sad but epic story of the Mexican Empire. I am very interested in the history of Mexico and this book does not disappoint if you are interested in a fictionalized drama of the country.

As in European history I come to find that even the Hapsburg Dynasty was installed in the far off land of Mexico. Hapsburg history intrigues me greatly and it was an added bonus to find Maximillian in the pages of this book. I knew that the French had conquered Mexico but I had no idea that it was a Hapsburg heir that was installed in the country.

This isn’t exactly an exciting book. I wasn’t dying to get to the next page. I read some brain candy while reading also to kind of have time to digest the massive amount of information that Mayo included in the 448 pages of the book. I suggest reading it if you are a fan of epic historical and if you are interested in the Hapsburg line of heirs. I am super happy to be on the Unbridled Tour and I think it is a publisher we should all pay more attention to in the future.

Author Joy Preble delights with her debut release. Dreaming Anastasia is both fun and full of drama. You follow three main characters through the book. Anastasia Romonav the daughter of the last Tsar of Russia somehow survived the attack on her family and is living in the house of an evil witch who was compelled by an ancient Russian brotherhood to save her life. Ethan has been trapped on earth never changing looking for the girl who can free Anastasia from the clutches of the witch and right the wrong he helped to create when he imprisoned Anastasia with the witch to save her life.

Anne Michealson is your average teen, late sipping, best friend having, and all around apple pie. Then she starts seeing a mysterious and quite handsome boy hanging around everywhere she goes. She marks him off as a stalker and continues with her everyday life. What she doesn’t know is she is destined to free an ancient princess from her prison, and that she is linked to this mysterious guy and together they will bend reality to save Anastasia.

I was excited to recieve a review copy of Dreaming Anastasia from Source Books. I read it immediately and had trouble waiting to post my review there were so many thoughts, and I just really enjoyed reading it. Joy Preble has an amazing writing style, her book is easy to breeze through and have a very relaxing fun read, but at the same time tug at your emotions as plots thicken in the story. I suggest you pick up this book if you are a fan of Historical Fiction, Teen Fiction, or need a relaxing read. It would be a good pick for the 24 hour read-a-thon later in the month and for YA book clubs.

Now the contest winner. I am very sorry to keep you all waiting so long! Susan from Bloggin’ About Books wins the copy of Dreaming Anastasia. Email me your address to pam(@)eurobands(.)us

Sacred Hearts follows a choir nun Sister Zuana, and a novice Sister Serefina through the reformations of the church in the 1600′s, first loves, and realizations of what life really means when you are cloistered behind abbey walls. Zuana was raised outside the abbey by a physician father who taught his daughter much of his own alchemy. Having a daughter educated in medicine however did Zuana no favors, when her father passed she was forced to either marry or become a nun. Zuana grapples with her sin of placing her father in her thoughts and prayers more than the holy father himself. Serafina a novice in love struggles with anorexia by holy proxy, being locked in a convent unwillingly, and finding her true place in life. Events in the convent are constantly disruptive as the novice finds her place and learns consequence. This novel transports you to Italy in an amazing time for the church and women. The ending of the book is absolutely perfect. I would recommend this book to anyone who has read and enjoyed Dunant’s previous works, if you like Historical Fiction, if you are interested in women’s hardships in ancient times, or if you just feel the need to read a beautiful story of love and life.

Sally has another child along the way, a girl she names Penny. She inadvertently ruins Penny’s life although for spoiler reasons I cannot say why and I think that took away from Sally’s story quite a bit.

Sally’s namesake and granddaughter is telling the story of Sally’s life and life beyond Sally. The way she describes her relationship with her Grandmother reminds me a lot of my East Coast up bringing.

The story skips around a bit and although it was very well written and I didn’t get lost in the plot at anytime I had a hard time connecting. I loved the parts of the story that were about Sally herself, but drudging through the tapes from little Sarah’s Father was a bit over the top for me. I know it was relevant to the story but it dragged on quite a while.

I do recommend this book to people who like a good story, appreciate recent history, and grew up or wonders about what it’s like to grow up on the East Coast. Sally’s story is definitely worth the read.