An excellent expansion of a riveting world and so well-written. My only issue is the same I had with "Priory" which is the Canthe plotline is tedious and I was always racing to finish any scene with her, so I could get back to the good parts.
But she sections are more than made up for by Glorian! Glorious Glorian! I love her character and story SO MUCH

This writing is so thin and the characters one dimensional, and what a shame she reduced such an interesting story as The Count of Monte Cristo to this. The end of this book makes absolutely no sense at all.

This is excellent, really well done as historical fiction (and I learned a lot!) But also in showing the relevance to our own time and exploring grief and love

I am giving 3 bc I did really want to find out what happened and the mystery propelled me, and the setting was very interesting and well-described, and the element of a character reading a book within a book was neat.
But. Wow. There are some truly disturbing women in this book and I feel like neither the author nor the main character grapples with that at all.
Also I would have liked to hear POV of Thomas Turner, why did we not ever get his thoughts? Would have been much more interesting than some of the other characters that we did.
I also do not like what seems like a characterization that being a mother or the desire for motherhood makes all these women so desperate and sneaky, and there is a subtle implication that being a mother makes you untrustworthy mentally, and I'm not a parent, but I just didn't like that whole vibe. Two of the most disturbing characters in the book aren't like that because of issues of motherhood, they're just disturbing people imo

I finished this book infuriated with the main character so...does that make it good? Or bad? So it gets a three.
This is like if Center Stage had a murder. Or if in "A Separate Peace" the queer subtext had been more text and if Gene had stopped being pathetic and just murdered Finney like he clearly wanted to.
Anyhow, there's a lot of good here but still it's not great.
I'm sure people who know Shakespeare better would enjoy it way more than I did

I love Kate Atkinson but this one fell a little flat for me. I wish there had been more about Nellie and less about Gwendolen or all the men who were not very interesting. But she does a great job evoking the time period and as always conveys the feelings of just after a war, or between wars, very well.
A few yrs ago she wrote for a tv show called "The Catch" and if you, like me, were one of the few people who watched it and liked the British crime family in it, you'll like this

Wow what a powerful book! It dragged a little at the end but then the actual ending was so evocative! It goes an entirely different way than you think it will and I enjoyed it because of that

CW on this book that it contains a lot of child abuse, like even for the 17th century a lot of child abuse.
This book was fine, but I didn't really get the fuss. The characters weren't much developed, but it did make me want to learn more about Bohemia and the Winter Queen, I'd rather read a book about her.
But the writing wasn't bad and stars for choosing an interesting time period

Credit for getting a lot of thoughts and ideas into such a slim book and it gave me a lot to think about.
Stars reduced because 1)not actually much advice on what she's proposing, but maybe she didn't get to pick the title?
2)the descriptions of performance art get old and seem out of touch
I'd be more interested in reading a regular column of her writing, going more in-depth with her variety of ideas