One More List of My Favorite Historical Fiction Reads of the Year
- The Bossy Bookworm
- 12 hours ago
- 6 min read
Favorite Bossy Historical Fiction Reads of the Year
I loved reading so many historical fiction books last year, this is my fourth list of favorites in that genre.
You can find the first list of my historical fiction favorites here, and you'll find Six More of My Favorite Historical Fiction Reads of the past year here. My third list is here.
If you've read any of these books, I'd love to hear what you think!
And if you're interested in My Very Favorite Bossy Reads of Last Year across all genres, check out the titles at this link!
What are some of your favorite historical fiction reads?
01 Pope Joan by Donna Woolfolk Cross
Donna Woolfolk Cross offers a fascinating historical fiction tale of a pioneering, headstrong, brilliant figure whose existence has been debated for centuries.
Pope Joan is Donna Woolfolk Cross's historical fiction about a figure whose existence the Catholic church has officially denied for a thousand years: Joan, a young woman who disguised herself as a man in the ninth century and rose through the ranks to eventually sit on the throne of St. Peter.
I'm fascinated by stories in which a woman poses as a man in order to achieve freedoms otherwise not available to her. In Pope Joan, Cross offers fascinating, grim, brutal details of life in the Dark Ages to bring the story of the brilliant, strong-willed Joan to life. Cross includes historical events, but makes up some characters (as with Gerold, Joan's love interest in the story).
I was fascinated by Cross's Author's Note detailing the extensive research and rich history surrounding Joan, as well as the contradictions in the denial of her existence.
For my full review, please see Pope Joan.
02 What the Mountains Remember by Joy Callaway
The historical fiction story about the building of the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, North Carolina, had a romantic element that was bigger than I was anticipating, but I enjoyed Callaway's storytelling on building logistics, the power of class and society, complications of widespread TB infection, visionaries shaping the future, as well as the love story that for much of the book seems destined for failure.
It's 1913, and Belle Newbold hasn't been into the mountains since her father died in a tragic West Virginia mining accident. In the seven years since, Belle's mother has reinvented herself as a society woman and has remarried, while Belle has learned to keep the family's past poverty, hunger, and struggles a secret.
Belle is fearful--particularly for her mother's sake--that her father's true origins may be uncovered and be their undoing. All of this, along with her pain at the loss of her beloved father, keeps her closed off emotionally. For her intended husband Worth, his tragic family past and complicated present seem to be stumbling blocks that can't be overcome.
The ins and outs of the Grove Park Inn's design and logistics of building were fascinating; Belle's research serves as an avenue for sharing this information, which feels thoroughly researched by the author herself.
The romance aspect of the story became more of a focus than I was anticipating, and I enjoyed Callaway's realistically tangled obstacles that persistently thwarted the easy path to love.
I listened to What the Mountains Remember as an audiobook. For more North Carolina stories, check out the books on this Bossy list. For my full review of this book, please see What the Mountains Remember.
03 Queens of London by Heather Webb
Queens of London is fascinating historical fiction that explores the gritty underbelly of post-World War I London through the points of view of Diamond Annie, head of an all-woman gang, and the female police inspector determined to arrest her.
In post-World War I London, female lawlessness in the form of the Forty Elephants gang of women, an offshoot of the Elephant and Castle men's gang, butts up against law enforcement, which only recently includes women officers.
It's 1925, and Diamond Annie is running a ruthless, savvy, gritty, loyal ring of female thieves and cons, and her significant ambition means she's dreaming of bigger and more wide-ranging success.
But one of Britain's first female police officers, Lilian Wyles, is underestimated, dismissed, disrespected--and desperate to prove her excellent mettle as an investigator by taking down Annie's gang.
When the two aspiring women's bids for victory clash, traditional female roles and power structures are shaken to their cores.
For my full review, check out Queens of London.
04 The Excitements by C. J. Wray
C. J. Wray's story of elderly British sisters who played key roles in fighting the enemy in World War II offers lots of heart, sassy dialogue, and a showcasing of the women's triumphs in both their past and present timelines, before a satisfying ending.
In C. J. Wray's The Excitements, Archie's British great-aunts Josephine and Penny are a handful. He's busy ushering them to commemorative World War II events, attempting to monitor their uninhibited speech, and trying to keep the two elderly veterans safe.
Archie begins wondering about unexplained aspects of his own family history, and when he and his aunts travel to Paris so the sisters may receive Légion d'honneur awards for helping to liberate France during the war, surprising facts begin to surface about the sisters' past--and they may be related to his own life.
The story is heartwarming, the pacing moves along in both timelines, and the characters are explored in satisfying fashion. The tone is playful with a wonderfully outlandish ending, and I was certain that all would work out, yet there was enough depth to make me interested in each character's resolution.
If you like books about World War II and women spies, you might also like the books on my Greedy Reading Lists Six Great Stories about Brave Women During World War IIÂ and Six Books about Brave Female Spies.
Click here for my full review of The Excitements.
05 The Women by Kristin Hannah
Hannah offers a meaty story about Vietnam and the nurses who served there, suffered, and were largely forgotten or denied; this storyline is conflated with romance-novel elements that keep things moving but frequently pulled me out of the historical fiction story I loved.
The Women shines a light on the women who served pivotal roles in the Vietnam War--but whose existence was largely ignored, forgotten, or denied by Americans at home.
Main protagonist Frankie signs up to leave her idyllic, privileged Southern California life--and the control of her conservative parents--in order to serve as a nurse serving soldiers in combat. Her brother is killed in combat before she even ships out, and her parents reject her potential to be a war hero worthy of a photo on the family's wall of honor, so she is reeling before she even enters the shock of Vietnam.
The excellent historical fiction here is conflated with romance-novel-worthy storylines and dialogue ("You don't know how beautiful you are" types of lines; unrealistically convenient run-ins; not-dead-after-all twists; and more). This aspect keeps the story moving, although it frequently distracted me from the hearty story of Vietnam, its complex costs and its dark perception at home, and the truth about the many forgotten women serving as nurses there, whose bravery helped send so many injured American soldiers home.
I listened to The Women as an audiobook. For my full review, check out The Women.
06 The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden
Katherine Arden, the author of the captivating Winternight trilogy, here shares a mysterious, haunting historical fiction story with a speculative twist, set against the backdrop of the trudging, brutal destruction of World War I.
In The Warm Hands of Ghosts, Arden presents the story of Laura, a combat nurse who is searching for her brother Freddie in the confusion, relentless mud, and grim destruction of the Great War.
Freddie is reported as having died, but strange and unnerving clues indicate to Laura that something more mysterious may have happened to him. Others keep sighting Freddie, and Laura herself feels that he is near.
The story's pacing felt quite slow and the tone extremely dark and hushed for the majority of the book, so that my attention frequently wavered. The slog of fighting and of the horrifyingly deadly war is conveyed with vivid, crushing, uncomfortable detail. I was glad when Laura began to allow herself to be vulnerable toward the end of the novel, and I very much liked the resolutions of the story.
For my full review, please see The Warm Hands of Ghosts.