Not a full 5* read for me, but I think that's mostly because it just felt too young. I bet I would have LOVED this had I read it as a teen. A historical story featuring three young girls, all from different backgrounds. One from Italy, a Russian Jew, and a wealthy city girl. 

This book popped up on my radar, as someone asked for a book with the same feel as "Newsies" ... this has some mention of newsies and the big newspaper boss, and it's ALL about the strike and unionization of the workers at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory.  I had heard about the fire there, it had been showcased in a few other novels I've read over the years. The fire was part of the story, but the strike, the conditions, were more front and center. 

The audio was available on Hoopla, and I was able to borrow the Kindle copy from the library. As I was waiting for my hold to come in ... I happened upon a hard copy in a LFL! I don't know that I would have noticed it if I wasn't already aware. I have read other books by this author ... I like her topics, and she writes well for the younger ages. It just doesn't always translate to adult readers. I found it too simplistic and repetitive. SO often, as there is a language barrier, one person doesn't understand what is being said/the words, but pretty much gets the meaning, and this is written over and over and over. I get it.  The girls were ... young girls. Likely realistic, but a little annoying to me. 

While I had this in three formats, I went primarily with the audio. A single narrator (Suzanne Toren), which was fine, as while there were the three different POVS (Bella, Yetta, Jane) it was third person/past tense. Slight accents, but still a little hard to tell much distinction in the audio. Except for a little part at the start and end, which is in present tense/Mrs Livingston (&Harriet) ... and while we don't know the date, it is the "present" and then the rest is in the past, years before, the stories of the three girls.   No real "chapters" listed numerically (Kindle did have numbers, but not announced in audio, and not shown in audio). Rotating POV between the girls. 

It's always a little easier for me to absorb info in a fictional/story setting. I thought this did a good job of showing the struggles of immigration, of factory conditions, of the strike ... and suffragette movement (not a main topic, but it came into play as well). I think this would be good reading for younger audiences, informative, while still having characters/a storyline.

There was a different voice for the Author's Notes ... the author? Regardless, I was happy to have the notes in a distinct voice, not the one we associate with the story/the girls.  In the note ... "Personally, when I’ve just read a historical novel that seemed completely real to me—as I hope this book seemed completely real to you—I hate to then read an author’s note explaining, “Well, this was real, but this wasn’t; this event didn’t actually occur, but it could have; this character I completely made up.” Because then the story recedes back into distant history, and what seemed so alive and immediate and tangible is gone." For ME, PERSONALLY, I LOVE when the author tells me exactly what was fact and what was fiction, otherwise, I tend to dismiss it all as fiction while hopefully following up to find out a little more on the subject. Ironically, the author then does go on to give a lot of great information and details. The Author's Notes were as informative, maybe more so, than the novel. 

YA - clean. No proFanity or sex. Other words I note: swath, sneaked, Carnegie (standard pronunciation), pogrom, rifling.

There were some weird clicks/pauses in the audio.