The Mad Womens Ball - Victoria Mas

The Mad Women's Ball was an impulse purchase in Waterstones... and yes, it's because I absolutely fell in love with the cover.

Set in a 19th century asylum in Paris, the book follows two women - Genevieve, the matron of the Salpetriere Asylum and Eugenie, the daughter of a well-respected family.

After finding a long lost necklace amongst the furniture, Eugenie confides in her grandmother that her dead grandfather had told her where it was. But her relatives take this is a sign that she is mad and quickly sends her off to the asylum.

Genevieve mistrusts her almost instantly and sets about making sure the rules are follows. Until a series of events leads her to question everything she's ever known.

The Mad Womens Ball is an insight into the views of the medical professional at the time towards women - with delightful and realistic characters that are each held for their own reasons.

Whilst it was never going to be a 'nice' book, it definitely gave me pause for thought and led me onto a wikipedia rabbit hole.

Comments

Murder on the Orient Express - Agatha Christie

Started: Saturday 2nd July 2022 Finished: Saturday 2nd July 2022 Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ On Saturday I travelled up to London to see Beauty and The Beast at the London Palladium and with a four hours on a train, I wanted something I could really get stuck into. I need a book small enough to fit in my bang, fast paced enough to lose myself in and lighthearted enough not to impact my mood and Murder On The Orient Express was perfect. My second delve into the Agatha Christie catalogue, I’ve already labelled her books as “filler” books - perfect for one sitting and clever enough to keep me guessing without the dreaded Book Hangover. Murder On The Orient Express sees the infamous Monsieur Hercule Poirot have an urgent recall to England, cutting his leisure time short. But oddly, the sleeper train is full, a strange and unexplained circumstance given the time of year. Through his years of connections, a temporary cabin is found to be shared with McQueen - the travel companion for Ratchett; and ...

DNF - The Final Revival of Opal & Nev - Dawnie Walton

I've been looking forward to this book so long but I'm just not in the right headspace for it. If you loved the writing style of Daisy Jones & The Six , you'll love this. In a similar vein, The Final Revival of Opal & Nev visits the history of these two performers in the 70s through interviews and accounts of the people that knew them. Everything about it is fantastic, the imagery, the tone - everything. I'm about 100 pages in and it's just not grabbing me at the moment. Could be something to do with the excessive weather we're having. So for now, I'm going to put it back on my TBR and try again another time.

Velvet Was The Night - Sylvia Moreno-Garcia

Started: Sunday 3rd July 2022 Finished: Monday 4th July 2022 Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I definitely judged this book by it’s cover. The image of this book absolutely drew me in the moment I saw it; I didn’t care what it was about, I had to read it. And I was not disappointed. Velvet Was The Night is set in Mexico in the early 1970s and follows Maite and Elvis whilst they unbeknowingly search for the same girl amongst political unrest and activism. I know very little about the culture that this book centres around but this gave me an insight which has definitely left me wanting to know more. I have Mexican Gothic on my TBR so that is likely to feature soon. It was a fast based book with plenty of tension and a bit of gore thrown in but not so much that I had to put it down at any stage. My only criticism is that if you don't know much about the era and unrest that the books is set around, you won't necessarily know much more by the end of it. I personally like to read historical fi...

The Little Library Project

Search This Blog