ginasbookreport

The Women by Kristin Hannah Publisher:  St. Martin’s Press Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Genre:  Historical Fiction / Literature / Feminism Read This If You Love:  The Nightingale / The Alice Network “Men keep us in boxes, make us wear starched virgin white, and tell us that docs are gods. And the worst part is, we believe them.” The Women  by Kristin Hannah is a breathtaking epic novel that delves into the women who served in the Vietnam War. Francis McGrath has lived a privileged life, but longs for something meaningful. After she suffers a great loss, she trains to be a nurse and finds herself out of her depth and in the muck in Vietnam. The grueling work and fighting is in stark contrast to what is being reported in the news. While the days are long and bloody, Frankie makes the tightest bonds of her life befriending her bunk mates and fellow nurses. She finds love, loss, death, life, joy, and pain. Through her story of service and return to state-side...

Diva by Daisy Goodwin Publisher:  St. Martin’s Press Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️.5 Genre:  Literature / Historical Fiction Read This If You Love:  Maria Callas “…but in the end, we all fall silent.” Diva is an historical fiction novel about the story of real-life opera singer Maria Callas. Callas is said to have one of the most beautiful voices ever, but her life off the stage was an opera fit for a diva as well. From her dramatic childhood during the war and her complex relationships with her mother and sister, to her long-running relationship with Aristotle Onassis, Callas led a fascinating life. Unfortunately, Diva  somehow falls short in entertaining the reader, IMHO. The book reads more like a biography than a fiction novel that uses a real-life person and events to center around a larger plot. For instance, The Rose Code  was set against Bletchley Circle and had many characters who existed in our world. However, there was a central event that T...

A Traitor in Whitehall by Julia Kelly Publisher: Minotaur Books Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Genre: Historical Fiction / Mystery  Read This If You Love:  The Rose Code  / spy novels / WWII historical fiction / mystery novels “You see, I simply adore detective fiction. Each new story contains within it the tantalizing possibility of a puzzle so fiendishly twisted that the solution may elude me until the final pages.”  Evelyne is doing her part in the war effort by endlessly stuffing bullets. Her only intrigue are the mystery novels that she loves. Soon, she finds herself reassigned to a secretive mission and finds herself locked in a room with a dead body. Working with a mysterious minister’s aid named Mr. Poole, the two set out to unravel all of the puzzles surrounding them. “I wasn’t sweet at all. I was curious and determined to find the killer.”  This book reminded me so much of The Rose Code  and the TV series The Bletchley Circle . ...

The Golden Gate by Amy Chua Publisher:  Minotaur Books an imprint of St. Martin’s Press Ginasbookreport Rating:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️ Genre:  Historical Fiction / Mystery Read This If You Love:  Historical Fiction / History “Nothing added up. I had a dead presidential candidate in the Claremont stripped half-naked with flowers sticking out of his mouth.” The Golden Gate weaves a mystery around the history of Berkeley and San Fransisco in the 1930s and 1940s. When a dead presidential candidate shows up in the storied Claremont hotel, Detective Al Sullivan is on the case. While investigating the homicide, Sullivan gets pulled into the peculiar Bainbridge family and their complicated past. Who committed the murder, why, and how reads like a classic gum-shoe detective tale. However, The Golden Gate  is packed full of historical details along the way.  While I enjoyed the core mystery, I prefer my historical fiction novels to better integrate the facts into the story ver...