Tag: Kate Quinn

The Briar Club by Kate Quinn (Historical Fiction)

Writing: 5/5 Characters: 5/5 Plot: 5/5

Thanksgiving 1954. Washington, DC. A women’s boarding house. A body. And blood — lots of blood. That’s how Kate Quinn’s latest book gets started. And yes, once I started, I never put it down as per usual with her books. She can really write!

Backing up from the Thanksgiving turmoil, the book starts in June 1950 and shifts the POV from boarder to boarder as the timeline makes its inexorable crawl towards the “exciting” date. This is an excellent device as not only do we get the events leading up to the end from different perspectives, we also get the stories of the women — all from different backgrounds and with different goals which together comprise a compendium of women’s lives at that time. An injured female baseball player from the short-lived women’s leagues; an older immigrant from Hungary; a young mother whose doctor husband has been overseas for two years; a secretary for the (real life) female Maine senator who goes up against McCarthy when nobody else has the guts; a secretary for HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee); a woman working for the National Archives in love with a gangster despite her best intentions; and the elusive Grace Marsh who brings them all together. These are just hints! Quinn does meticulous research and is able to bring so much of the McCarthy era to the surface — especially around the societal expectations of women. It felt like I was living it.

The book is non-stop action — but — I realized it is the kind of action I care about. Things change, people and their prejudices, fears, and disappointments have to be dealt with and some individuals actually use their experiences to shift their perspectives. Opportunities come up and people learn about themselves (for better and worse) when they choose a reaction. Action does not have to be long (and very dull) car chase scenes or long battles of any kind. Epiphany! Absolutely captivating characters — a couple of “bad men” with no real depth but plenty of men and women (and kids) who are each real in their own way. FYI two of the (fictional) characters were named after people who won the “name-a-character” raffle — what fun! Some impressive twists — do not read the end or the notes first. In addition to being a gripping read, I’m still thinking about it many days later. Always a good sign.

Highly recommended.

Thank you to William Morrow and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on July 9th, 2024.

The Huntress by Kate Quinn (Historical Fiction)

Another powerhouse from Kate Quinn — propulsive (my new favorite word for books like this where one page practically forces you to turn to the next quickly) and intriguing at multiple levels. Parenthetically, I listened to this on audio and cannot stress enough how fantastic the reader (Saskia Maarleveld) was. I generally prefer reading to listening, but I’m fairly certain that her reading made this book significantly better than it would have been without (and that starts from a high rating to begin with!)

Three intertwined timelines racing towards the identification, location, and capture of the Nazi war criminal called die Jagerin — the Huntress. This is the woman who engaged in murder as Nazi sport, including the killing of children in cold blood towards the end of the war. The timelines: 1946 — Jordan — a 17-year old girl who passionately wants to be a photojournalist a la Margaret Bourke-White; 1950 — Ian Graham — world-weary British war correspondent turned Nazi hunter with an almost desperate need to see die Jagerin caught and tried; 1941 — Nina Markova — born in the frozen wastelands of Siberia whose sheer force of will gets her into the legendary (and historically accurate) Night Witches — an all female bomber squad that marked the beginning of Soviet acceptance of women in combat.

The writing is excellent, with perfect pacing. The characters are detailed and completely believable (to me). Tons of little details that make me feel as though I really know these people and made me miss them when the story was over. Plenty of reflection on life for each of the characters — threads of trust, context, truth without sensationalism (always my favorite), what it means to find a community, the importance of friendship and of having a purpose, and how someone can both love another person and be horrified by them at the same time. Additional details about groups as well — attitudes toward the war and the criminals it produced five years later. I really couldn’t stop reading (listening).

My only negatives — it felt just a little too long — especially listening to an audio book; and I had a hard time knowing who die Jagerin was (this is pretty obvious to the reader from the beginning) but I had to watch the characters NOT FIGURE IT OUT FAST ENOUGH FOR ME!

Highly recommended — especially the audio book.

The Phoenix Crown by Kate Quinn and Janie Chang (Historical Fiction)

Writing: 4/5 Characters: 5/5 Plot: 4/5

Two determined women, a wealthy, charming, but deeply dangerous man, and a precipitous event come together in this propulsive novel by Kate Quinn and Janie Chang. I’ve read most of Quinn’s novels; I’m planning to read my first Chang shortly because it looks fascinating!

Gemma Garland comes to San Francisco to meet up with the Met traveling group to join the chorus when a current singer chooses to leave. Garland is a gorgeous soprano who is prevented from singing leading roles due to debilitating migraines she can’t control. Feng Suling is a (very) talented seamstress who is desperate to escape the arranged marriage her uncle is forcing on her to escape his (massive) gambling debts after her parents died. Mr. Thornton — a wealthy and ambitious patron of the arts — is in a position to help them both and yet… he is not necessarily what he seems to be. It is early April in 1906 and the infamous San Francisco earthquake is less than two weeks away.

Good writing encompassing plenty of richly detailed history. Real characters such as Enrico Caruso (famous tenor — I’m guessing most of you know this!), Martin Beck (the founder of the Orpheum theater), and Alice Eastwood (the curator of Botany at the California Academy of Sciences) are inserted into the plot without betraying their actual character or actions (at least not too much). Fascinating details about Asian art, including the Phoenix Crown (real and stunning), an exquisite Dragon Robe, and multiple object d’art are included — both in description and in terms of how they are made. A full description of Chinatown and the various laws, policies, and practices around Chinese immigrants at the time is provided with depth and nuance.

A powerful narrative with a real punch. Plenty of opportunity to perch on the edge of your seat and bite a nail or two.

Thank you to William Morrow Paperbacks and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on February 13th, 2024.

The Diamond Eye by Kate Quinn (Historical Fiction — audio book)

Writing: 5 /5 Characters: 5/5 Plot: 5/5
    Kate Quinn can write! This is the third book of hers that I’ve read (in this case, listened to — excellent reader.) Every one grips you completely from beginning to end. This is the story of Mila Pavlichenko — the history student who becomes Russia’s deadliest sniper when the Germans invade Ukraine in 1937. Based on the real person’s memoir, it takes us through her war: from enlistment, to finally getting a weapon, to becoming a sniper (with 309 certified kills), to her participation in the American goodwill tour (where she is befriended by Eleanor Roosevelt) designed to get the US into the war on a second front.
    The primary characters — Mila, her sniper partner Kostya, her should be ex-husband Alexei, and her lover Lionya — were incredible. Full of depth and reflection and firmly placed in the context of their time and place. I loved the depiction of relationships during wartime — the development, the tightness, and sometimes the loss — which often brought tears to my eyes. I also loved Mila’s sense of droll humor — not a characteristic much valued in the Soviet Komsomol. Perhaps this is part of why I felt connected almost instantly, even though Mila’s life was about as far as you could get from my own.
   There is plenty of action and drama in this story, but nothing is “over dramatized.” There is plenty to feel from the factual story itself without needing the embellishment of extra heartstring tugging prose. And the action — which typically bores me — is so personal that is interesting. There are strong feminist themes throughout the book. The Soviets were the only army at the time that allowed women to fight, and yet women were still subjected to expectations of sexual favors, lack of promotion, and plenty of ill will from their male comrades-in-arms. On the US goodwill tour, Mila was subjected to absurd questions such as her skin care regime and lipstick choices on the front as well as the color of her preferred underwear. Her answers were worth the entire price of admission. I particularly appreciated what felt like genuine attitudes toward the Soviet Union from the woman who lived there — there was no smacking of modern or US based sensibilities sneaking into the text.
    As always, Quinn is meticulous in documenting which parts of the novel are fiction and which are based on documented fact. I am quite impressed with both the integration of the two and the clean lines between them, making it easy to enjoy and yet distinguish between, a documentation of a real life and an electrifying story layered on top without disturbing the base.
    Highly recommended (and now I need to go read the rest of her books — my TBR pile is long past the toppling stage…)

The Rose Code by Kate Quinn (Historical Fiction)

Writing: 4/5 Plot: 4.5/5 Characters: 5/5

Powerful historical fiction around the women involved in Bletchley Park (the British code breaking center during WWII). Absolutely gripping and completely brought to life the absolute intensity of the time, environment, and activities of the place that many have credited with shortening the war by 2-4 years.

Quinn used three female characters to tell the story: Osla Kendall, an intelligent socialite who constantly fights against the label of “Dizzy Deb”; 6-foot tall Mab Churt, a working class girl from Shoreditch who strove to make a better life for herself; and Beth Finch, a complete mouse of a girl who had been told she was stupid her whole life, but who became one of the leading cryptanalysts at Bletchley. All three find that the work they end up doing is not only essential to the country and the war effort, but essential to their own sense of self and worth.

The story is told in a dual timeline: In 1940, each of the three finds herself at Bletchley and an entirely new world of code breaking, secrecy, independence and intense pressure opens up to them. In 1947 — two years after the war ended — the three women are not speaking to each other, one of them has been involuntarily committed to an institution, the Royal Wedding is afoot, and there is a dangerous traitor from the Bletchley time that has never been caught. I was fascinated by every part of the 1940 timeline though it ran me through the wringer in terms of emotion, stress, and an all too real depiction of life during wartime. Quinn did a fantastic job of illustrating all the different work in Bletchley from breaking the codes, to running the (massive and complicated) machinery, to simply administrating the communication needs of a bustling, yet intensely secretive, organization. It’s a good reminder of what life was like before computers and smart phones! I loved the detail, both of the mechanisms and how the women coped with challenges they had never been expected to face before. Plenty of sexism, as one might expect, but also plenty of opportunity for women to shine due to both the need and the utter unorthodoxy of the place, teeming, as it was, with “weirdos” and “nerds” who had the right kind of brains for this odd work. In her afterward, Quinn describes the real-life models for her characters and for the events and plot points she included. Although I found some of the story to be more dramatic than I like, she convinced me that everything included could and did happen. Make sure you read the afterword!