Renegade Girls tells the story of Nell, a girl from Chicago who spends summers with her aunt and uncle in New York. This year, at 17, Nell is eligible to marry… and more importantly, she’s working as a reporter! The story explores life as a late-nineteenth-century “stunt girl”, an undercover reporter, alongside a sweet story ofRead More
Regency Romances About Working Women: The Feminine Pursuits Series by Olivia Waite
Earlier this year, I read Olivia Waite’s Murder by Memory, a delightful sci-fi mystery novella. Having seen recommendations for her historical romance novel, The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics, I decided to read all three Feminine Pursuits books. The series can be read as standalone romances, though I enjoyed flying through them in order. Each of them shares aRead More
Sugar, Spice, and Suffragettes: When We Lost Our Heads by Heather O’Neill
I admit, I am tired of feminist retellings. Or rather, books marketed as powerful treatises on female rage, when in reality, they are often little more than palatable, watered-down morsels of women’s empowerment, lacking any nuance. Unfortunately, even fictional empowerment remains a privilege usually afforded to classically beautiful, relatively upper-class white women, who enjoy maximumRead More
Maggie reviews Folly by Maureen Brady
This month I read Folly by Maureen Brady, an extremely interesting working class lesbian book published in 1982. Folly is set in a small factory town and follows several women as they struggle to reconcile their desires for a better life with the reality of their jobs and lives. The title character, Folly, works with several area women, includingRead More