Six Bossy Favorite Historical Fiction Reads from the Past Year
- The Bossy Bookworm
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Six Bossy Favorite Historical Fiction Reads from Last Year
Historical fiction is one of my favorite reading genres, and this is the first of three historical-fiction favorite lists I'll have for you as I revisit my reading for the Bossy best of the best from the past year.
You can explore the twelve titles on My Very Favorite Bossy 2025 Reads to find out about my overall favorite reads from last year, or you can click to read about past Bossy historical favorites.
If you've read any of these titles, I'd love to hear what you think!
What are some of your favorite historical reads, whether from the past year or beyond?
01 Boy by Nicole Galland
Galland offers a detailed peek into the London of Shakespeare's company and the life of starring "boy player" Alexander Cooke, his best girl Joan, who dresses as a boy to explore scientific pursuits, and the palace intrigue that occurs when their allies conflict with Queen Elizabeth.
In Nicole Galland's historical fiction tale Boy, Alexander "Sander" Cooke is a famed, sought-after "boy player" in Shakespeare's company, and his roles skillfully playing lovely women have led highbrow ladies and gentlemen alike to seduce him with favors and attention. His apprenticeship is nearly over, and he has neither an assurance of steady work as a young man playing male roles with his company, nor a sponsor to support him.
Joan Buckler is Sander's best friend. She's curious about everything and is the smartest person Sander knows. But her female sex holds her back from being able to find the knowledge she seeks, and she dresses as a boy to gain access to medical lectures and more.
I wished for more behind-the-scenes peeks at Shakespeare's shows, and I was least interested in the political conflicts and drama, although they were essential to the conflict of the book. I loved the romantic connection between Joan and Sander, Joan's scientific pursuits--particularly the botany-related efforts she enters into with her eccentric friends, and how Galland deftly places the reader in the story's place and time with rich details.
For my full review of Boy, please check out this link.
02 An Unexpected Peril (Veronica Speedwell #6) by Deanna Raybourn
While Veronica and Stoker stay close to home while entering into danger and solving the mysteries in book six of this series, Raybourn repeatedly evokes images of the fictional European country Alpenwald. Gruff Stoker conveys his adoration of Veronica in a poignant, lovely way.
It's January 1889, and Veronica and her natural historian beau Stoker are working on a memorial exhibition showcasing the achievements of mountain climber Alice Baker-Greene. But evidence indicates to Veronica that Alice may have been murdered. And Princess Gisela of the Alpenwald, a dear friend of Alice's, goes missing just after Veronica shares her suspicion--requiring Veronica to pose as the princess in order to preserve a secret peace treaty that's being brokered.
While Veronica and Stoker stick close to home for their adventures in this installment of the series, there's plenty of intrigue, and Raybourn evokes repeated images of mountain climbing in the Alpenwald, a fictional country sandwiched between Germany and France, as well as extensive forays into the country's traditions, political interests, and its royal family's interpersonal conflicts and loyalties.
The LGBTQ+ love conveyed in the story is lovely, and Veronica's matter-of-fact approach to this relationship as well as cross-class romance is typical of her no-nonsense, pro-love (and, for her, anti-marriage) stance established in earlier books.
The evolution of Stoker and Veronica's own relationship in this book is understated yet beautifully poignant; I teared up at one point when the gruff Stoker conveyed his feelings to Veronica.
Raybourn is the author of A Curious Beginning, as well as the sequels A Perilous Undertaking, A Treacherous Curse, A Dangerous Collaboration, and A Murderous Relation. (There are currently nine books in the series, with a tenth scheduled for publication in 2026.) Raybourn is also the author of the wonderful title about retired middle-aged assassins, Killers of a Certain Age, and its sequel Kills Well with Others.
For my full review of this book please see An Unexpected Peril.
03 I'll Be Right Here by Amy Bloom
I'm a huge Amy Bloom fan, and I appreciated the strong main female character here and the World War II-era crises. At times the story felt somewhat disjointed and flagged in pacing as it addressed various events of the characters' later years.
Gazala must be crafty, humble, and alert to get by as a Jew while World War II envelops Paris. When she emigrates to New York City, she is befriended by two strong young sisters, Anne and Alma, and Gazala's adopted brother Samir joins them in Manhattan.
I'll Be Right Here tracks decades in their lives, including victories, pain, unorthodox choices, and love.
I was invested in Gazala's young life; the concessions, cleverness, and compromises necessary during desperate times; and particularly her ability to navigate a potentially deadly and complex wartime crisis with sometimes ruthless focus.
I appreciated the highlighting of various shapes of relationships. I had significant difficulty getting past the fact that an adoptive sibling pair fell in love, while appreciating that the unprecedented trauma of World War II and the importance of human connection were essential factors in this.
I received a prepublication edition of this title courtesy of NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group.
For my full review please check out I'll Be Right Here.
Bloom is also the author of White Houses, which I gave 5 Bossy stars, the heartbreakingly beautiful In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss, Away, Lucky Us, Come to Me: Stories, and A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You: Stories.)
04 Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall
In Hall's Broken Country, characters do their duties, find wondrous love, feel heartbreak, suffer tragedies, sometimes act impulsively, and reel from the consequences of all of the above. A mystery surrounds a deadly moment, and the book ends with a hopeful, imperfect, heartbreaking way forward.
Beth and her kind husband Frank live and farm outside the small English village where they grew up. They love each other, but they are able to stay married only because they push down the memories of tragedies that could haunt them, and because secrets from the past stay buried.
But when Frank's brother shoots a dog going after the family's sheep, the gunshot sets into motion events that will change everything.
The dog belonged to Gabriel Wolfe, Beth's childhood love, and his return to town brings back long-suppressed complications around jealousies, love, choices, and the weighty consequences of the past.
Broken Country is a study of an extreme, life-and-death-stakes fallout after heartbreaking tragedy, but it's also a story of young love blossoming, then shriveling under the first pressures of the outside world; it's a mystery in which duty overpowers the difficult truth; and it's a hopeful view of how an imperfect set of characters can find their clumsy, sometimes beautiful, way forward.
I read this immersive story in a flash.
For my full review of this book please see Broken Country.
05 Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid
I love an astronaut story, and while Reid spent far more page time on relationships than on the astronaut or space aspects, there was plenty of each to go around in this novel that was the perfect book at the perfect time for me. I loved it--and I listed this book as one of My Very Favorite Bossy 2025 Reads.
Joan has always been fascinated by the stars, and as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University, she teaches her passion to college students. On the side, she shows her beloved young niece the sky and serves as a second parent alongside her sometimes-trying single-mother sister.
When she sees an ad seeking for the first women scientists to join NASA’s space shuttle program, Joan becomes obsessed with being part of the 1980s training and with becoming one of the first women in space.
The complicated interpersonal situations added wonderful depth to the complexities of astronauts' training, stresses, competition, and life-and-death goals of entering space. The women's fights to fully be part of a traditionally male-dominated field and the various ways in which they navigated this were particularly captivating to me.
The carelessness that partially leads to the crisis in space felt unrealistic to me, and the high drama and gasping reveal regarding the pivotal space scene toward the end could have felt over the top, but as usual, I was putty in Taylor Jenkins Reid's hands, ready to embrace every bit of it.
This was exactly the right story for me at the right time, and I hugged it to my chest when I finished, then immediately began telling everyone how much I loved it.
Taylor Jenkins Reid is also the author of Carrie Soto Is Back, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Malibu Rising, and Daisy Jones & the Six. You might also want to check out these other Bossy reviews of books about astronauts and space.
06 All the Broken Places by John Boyne
All the Broken Places is a novel that is linked to Boyne's novel The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. The exploration of gray areas between good and evil was the most intriguing aspect to me as our elderly protagonist faced a difficult past.
Ninety-one-year-old Gretel Fernsby is living out her days in a posh flat in London. She's friends with her younger across-the-hall neighbor Helen, who is coping with dementia, and Gretel's three-times-married-and-divorced grown son lives in the city, but otherwise Gretel keeps to herself.
When a couple and young son move into the flat below her, Gretel begins to worry that the man of the house is harming his wife and child, and her hesitant involvement leads him to discover elements about Gretel's youth in Berlin during World War II that she never wanted to face again.
The present-day "bad guy" is a gleefully rotten, abusive, sinister character who is easy to detest. Gretel's unwanted bond with the young boy downstairs brings memories flooding back from her own childhood, and her resistance to his bond and then her deep loyalty to him lead to a ending that is centered around revenge, consequences, and justice.
John Boyne is the author of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, and this novel is linked to that one. I found that book somewhat frustrating in the suspension of disbelief necessary for the plot to work, but the premise was also horrifyingly fascinating.
Click here for my full review.
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