Review: Girl in Disguise by Greer Macallister

Release Date: March 21, 2017

This book caught my attention because I loved the idea of a novel about Kate Warne, the first female Pinkerton agent, and I just hoped the writing, plot, and characters would be as good as the premise. I knew from the first few pages they would be.

Excellently written with great characters, fictional and historic alike, the plot takes the reader into the spy world of the Civil War. I did feel as though the romance was a little superficial, but otherwise, I felt the character development was very good, especially Kate's. Told in first person, we really get to see and feel Kate's thoughts and emotions, how she deals with the moral questions of lying, deceiving, and hurting people for the greater good, and how she deals with knowing she'll never have a normal, family life.

The plot is what really drives this though, and I frequently found it hard to put down, always wanting to know what would happen next. Lot's of action and adventure.

I'm interested in the author's first novel now. Though it wasn't a premise I was previously interested in, knowing how much I enjoyed this one, I have to give it a try.

Advanced review copy from the publisher via NetGalley. My opinions are my own.

Review: The Second Mrs. Hockaday by Susan Rivers

Advanced review copy from publisher via NetGalley. My opinions are my own.

Release Date: January 10, 2017

This novel about a young woman who is thrust into a hard life as the wife of an absent soldier and farmer during the American Civil War is told through letters, diaries, and other documents. At only 17 years old, and after only one week at her new home, she is left alone to care for her husband's farm and his son by his previous marriage as he returns to the battle front. When he finally returns two years later, he finds his young wife has given birth to another man's child in his absence, and is being accused of murdering the infant.

I struggled to read this at first, because all dialogue described through the letters or journals is completely unquoted. I'm not sure why, because any quote should be in quotation marks, regardless of whether it's within a letter or diary or not. It was very difficult to know whether the start of a sentence was going to be narrative or dialogue until you reached the end of the sentence. It felt very disjointed.

But the other reviewers seemed to rave about it, so I stuck with it, and it did get easier to read. However, I found myself simply not caring very much about the characters or what happened to them, and I struggled to finished it.