Skip to content

Tag: Victorian

Review – How to be a Victorian

Posted in Book Blogger

How to Be a Victorian: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Victorian Life

by Ruth Goodman

Book cover: How to be a victorian

Series: How to Be
Genres: History, Non Fiction, Victorian, English History
Release Date: October 6, 2014
Pages: 473
Purchase from: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Google BooksKobo

My Rating: ★★★★☆

View ratings overview

☆☆☆☆☆ – Did not finish
★☆☆☆☆ – Hated it
★★☆☆☆ – Disliked it
★★★☆☆ – Okay
★★★★☆ – Liked it
★★★★★ – Loved it
Read the full explanation of my book rating system.

Lauded by critics, How to Be a Victorian is an enchanting manual for the insatiably curious, the “the cheapest time-travel machine you’ll find” (NPR). Readers have fallen in love with Ruth Goodman, an historian who believes in getting her hands dirty. Drawing on her own firsthand adventures living in re-created Victorian conditions, Goodman serves as our bustling guide to nineteenth-century life. Proceeding from daybreak to bedtime, this charming, illustrative work “imagines the Victorians as intrepid survivors” (New Republic) of the most perennially fascinating era of British history. From lacing into a corset after a round of calisthenics to slipping opium to the little ones, Goodman’s account of Victorian life “makes you feel as if you could pass as a native” (The New Yorker).

Review – Unmentionable

Posted in Book Blogger

Unmentionable: The Victorian Lady’s Guide to Sex, Marriage, and Manners

by Therese Oneill

Genres: 19th Century World History, Etiquette, Victorian Era
Release Date: October 25, 2016
Pages: 309
Purchase from: Amazon

My Rating: ★★★★★

View ratings overview

☆☆☆☆☆ – Did not finish
★☆☆☆☆ – Hated it
★★☆☆☆ – Disliked it
★★★☆☆ – Okay
★★★★☆ – Liked it
★★★★★ – Loved it
Read the full explanation of my book rating system.

Have you ever wished you could live in an earlier, more romantic era? Ladies, welcome to the 19th century, where there’s arsenic in your face cream, a pot of cold pee sits under your bed, and all of your underwear is crotchless. (Why? Shush, dear. A lady doesn’t question.)

Unmentionable is your hilarious, illustrated, scandalously honest (yet never crass) guide to the secrets of Victorian womanhood, giving you detailed advice on: What to wear Where to relieve yourself How to conceal your loathsome addiction to menstruating What to expect on your wedding night How to be the perfect Victorian wife Why masturbating will kill you And more!

Irresistibly charming, laugh-out-loud funny, and featuring nearly 200 images from Victorian publications, Unmentionable will inspire a whole new level of respect for Elizabeth Bennett, Scarlet O’Hara, Jane Eyre, and all of our great, great grandmothers. (And it just might leave you feeling ecstatically grateful to live in an age of pants, super absorbency tampons, epidurals, anti-depressants, and not dying of the syphilis your husband brought home.)

Review – My Plain Jane

Posted in Book Blogger

My Plain Jane

by Cynthia Hand Jodi Meadows, and Brodi Ashton

My Plain JaneSeries: The Lady Janies, Book 2
Genres: Historical Fiction, Fantasy, Retelling, Classic Rewrites
Release Date: June 26, 2018
Pages: 464
Purchase from: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo
My Rating: ★★★★★

You may think you know the story. Penniless orphan Jane Eyre begins a new life as a governess at Thornfield Hall, where she meets one dark, brooding Mr. Rochester—and, Reader, she marries him. Or does she?

Prepare for an adventure of Gothic proportions, in which all is not as it seems, a certain gentleman is hiding more than skeletons in his closets, and one orphan Jane Eyre, aspiring author Charlotte Bronte, and supernatural investigator Alexander Blackwood are about to be drawn together on the most epic ghost hunt this side of Wuthering Heights.

Review – Hunting Prince Dracula

Posted in Book Blogger

Hunting Prince Dracula

by Kerri Maniscalco

Hunting Prince DraculaSeries: Stalking Jack the Ripper, Book 2
Genres: Historical Fiction, Mystery, Horror, Romance
Release Date: September 19, 2017
Pages: 480
Purchase from: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo
My Rating: ★★★★☆

Following the grief and horror of her discovery of Jack the Ripper’s true identity, Audrey Rose Wadsworth has no choice but to flee London and its memories. Together with the arrogant yet charming Thomas Cresswell, she journeys to the dark heart of Romania, home to one of Europe’s best schools of forensic medicine…and to another notorious killer, Vlad the Impaler, whose thirst for blood became legend.
But her life’s dream is soon tainted by blood-soaked discoveries in the halls of the school’s forbidding castle, and Audrey Rose is compelled to investigate the strangely familiar murders. What she finds brings all her terrifying fears to life once again.

Review – Stalking Jack the Ripper

Posted in Book Blogger

Stalking Jack the Ripper

by Kerri Maniscalco

Stalking Jack the RipperSeries: Stalking Jack the Ripper, Book 1
Genres: Historical Fiction, Mystery, Horror, Romance
Release Date: September 20, 2016
Pages: 352
Purchase from: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo
My Rating: ★★★★☆

Seventeen-year-old Audrey Rose Wadsworth was born a lord’s daughter, with a life of wealth and privilege stretched out before her. But between the social teas and silk dress fittings, she leads a forbidden secret life.

Against her stern father’s wishes and society’s expectations, Audrey often slips away to her uncle’s laboratory to study the gruesome practice of forensic medicine. When her work on a string of savagely killed corpses drags Audrey into the investigation of a serial murderer, her search for answers brings her close to her own sheltered world.

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies so that I can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognizing you when you return to this website and helping me to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

You can adjust all of your cookie settings by navigating the tabs on the left hand side.

This information is provided in compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).