Rating: ★★★
I received this book for free from the publisher (Grand Central Publishing) in exchange for an honest review.
I love learning about awesome historical reading so I had high hopes for this book. Unfortunately, this book didn’t hit all the marks.
It was hard for me to get into this book at first because the book didn’t grip me. The book pretty much consists of short biographies of different women from the Regency period. For the first couple of chapters, none of the women grasped my attention. As the book progressed, I became more interested.
The main reason why the book didn’t fully capture my interest until later on was the writing style. The entries on the women are very basic. They don’t do a deep dive into their lives or offer much of an analysis aside from the obvious. If it was written in a more engaging way then that would have helped solve the issue. Also, I think the book would have worked better if it were a collection of essays. It would have been more powerful.
There were some things I did like. I liked that every chapter had a conclusion section. Doing that helped tie together the biographies of the particular chapter. I also liked that the recommend reading was included at the end of each chapter, making them easier to refer to. Lastly, I found the chapters on women in STEM and queer women to be the strongest.
Overall, the book had fascinating content but the execution left much to be desired.
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