Sign up for our newsletters to receive our Best of 2024 ezine!

Reviews by Bella Firenze

Order Reviews by:
The Historian
by Elizabeth Kostova
Good Grief, FIND AN EDITOR (12/20/2022)
Having just read the last page of The Historian (I wanted to finish what I started, despite the agony), I felt like, in a sense, I was being gaslit. I mean, do the avid readers out there actually esteem this book as something worthwhile and recommendable? I had read SO many glowing reviews before I started reading it and was really anticipating a juicy, historically dense thriller. All I kept thinking as I got further into the story was this: how on earth did this book even get published?! I could not believe HOW MANY PAGES of absolutely zero consequence could be written. At least 600 of the 900 pages could have easily been omitted. It’s my own fault - I should have returned the book to the library when I started questioning the editing (or complete lack thereof). I was happy to find other readers with a similar experience of this story - guess I’m not that crazy after all.
  • Page
  • 1

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket
    The Frozen River
    by Ariel Lawhon
    "I cannot say why it is so important that I make this daily record. Perhaps because I have been ...
  • Book Jacket
    Prophet Song
    by Paul Lynch
    Paul Lynch's 2023 Booker Prize–winning Prophet Song is a speedboat of a novel that hurtles...
  • Book Jacket: The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern
    The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern
    by Lynda Cohen Loigman
    Lynda Cohen Loigman's delightful novel The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern opens in 1987. The titular ...
  • Book Jacket: Small Rain
    Small Rain
    by Garth Greenwell
    At the beginning of Garth Greenwell's novel Small Rain, the protagonist, an unnamed poet in his ...

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
The Story Collector
by Evie Woods
From the international bestselling author of The Lost Bookshop!
Book Jacket
In Our Midst
by Nancy Jensen
In Our Midst follows a German immigrant family’s fight for freedom after their internment post–Pearl Harbor.
Who Said...

We have to abandon the idea that schooling is something restricted to youth...

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Big Holiday Wordplay 2024

Enter Now

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.