In March, I decided to take part in the Backlist Readathon. I had a pretty ambitious TBR which you can feel free to check out here. Did I end up reading all of these books? Absolutely not, but I’m not mad about it because I ended up finding some new favorite books in this readathon.
Let’s start of be recapping the one book I managed to get to this readathon that was on my intended TBR.
This book was a miss for me. I got thirty or fifty pages into this book before I set it aside. It was just way too much for me. I found the main character to be a bit annoying and I got pretty tired of her step-father who’s a therapist and leads every conversation with “but how are you really feeling?”. I’m pretty disappointed about DNF’ing of this book. I thought that we were going to jump into a deep, moving book, and while we have the set up for it, I didn’t really get a mesh with the main character so I had to set it aside. I am planning to pick this book up later in the year and I now know that I need to lower my expectations before going into the book.
This book took me by surprise. I had no idea what this book was going to be about before going into it. All I knew about this book was that it follows the story of a mother, her midwife, and the birthing of the baby. So when I realized that it’s a story of Mary Wollstonecraft, my mind was blown. I’m not going to lie, I didn’t realize till it was made clear in the book that Mary Wollstonecraft is the mother of Mary Shelley.
There’s so much I want to say about this book and I am in fact, working on my essay for it so be on the look out for a review. Long story short, this book is full of pretty writing and the story of a girl growing into a woman who’s well aware of how restrictive, dangerous, and limiting society is to the female species. It’s got feminist notes as we follow young Mary battle her turbulent childhood, to find love, and to find a meaning in life that remains true to her desires to fight for women’s rights.
The idea of this story is tragic from the get go. The book starts off with a very somber turn and as Mary starts to tell her story, we’re sucked into a child who lived an abusive, neglected childhood. I could see some characteristics of Anne from “Anne With an E” in young Mary. But as somber as the tone, is you get sucked into the story of this woman and this historical time period when so much of knowledge was at the peak of discovery, production, and realization. We get visits from historical figures such as Thomas Paine, Darwin, and so many others who I haven’t heard of before but am keen to research now.
This has quickly been added to my favorites list. If you’re an avid historical romance reader or a highlander romance reader and are looking for something new, I highly suggest this. I don’t read much highlander romance but this was a slap in the face reminder that I need to fix that.
This book covered pretty interesting topics that I wasn’t aware of such as birthing in the early 1100’s. I learned a lot. I just realized that I read two birth related books in this readathon lol. I also became quickly aware that I don’t know much about the time period or historical setting of this book either. The guy main character in this book is not exactly alpha male but he’s pretty close. As the Laird, he says quite questionable things that make our home girl roll her eyes and say “not till you ask nicer”. I think my favorite line in this book was something like, “You can’t leave because I’m keeping you.” Sounds pretty asshole like but coming out of his mouth , it made me swoon a bit.
As someone who reads a lot of historical romances, sometimes, books start to mesh together and it’s hard to find one that stands out. This book did that for me. We get to follow an English woman get thrown into the Highlander life during a turbulent time when both communities hated each other. We see a strong female relationship and a romance that will pull at your heart strings. I really loved how protective and respectful the male love interest was.
I also just really liked the writing. Julie Garwood’s writing feels so much more flushed out than other historical romances I’ve read.
Have you participated in the Backlist Readathon the past month? What did you read? What’s your favorite backlist?
[…] you want to hear more about some of my other March reads, check out my post where I talk about all the books I read for the Backlist […]