Bea Koch

The book describes itself as one that highlights women of the Regency period who go against the popular image of the staid, white, Christian women that appears in popular media. And it kind of does that but with some stylistic choices that baffled me. The author, Bea Koch, is a co-owner of the Ripped Bodice and so several of her chapters make references to depictions of the period in Regency romances, but gets too much into plot details of referenced novels in this reader's opinion for a book that's ostensibly history and not literary commentary. The writing style also felt a bit like an undergraduate history essay, highlighting a few women but then including a conclusion passage (with a paragraph heading of "Conclusion," which made me want to cringe). In more than one chapter, while discussing a single woman there is a paragraph break to discuss a tangentially related woman (with a paragraph heading of "Spotlight on X") and then goes back to the original woman being discussed with a paragraph heading "Back to X." It's a weird stylistic choice and would likely have been better served by a highlight block outside the body of the section. The content isn't bad but it could have been presented much better with stronger editing. That said the book does a solid job of introducing a variety of women who transgressed norms for the period and includes artists, women working in STEM, queer women, women of colour, and Jewish women. It's worth picking up the book to learn the names of these women and the outlines of their lives, but if you're looking for real biographies or histories, I'd look to the titles included in each chapter's recommended reading instead.… (plus d'informations)

I received this book for free from the publisher (Grand Central Publishing) in exchange for an honest review.

I love learning about awesome historical reading so I had high hopes for this book. Unfortunately, this book didn’t hit all the marks.

It was hard for me to get into this book at first because the book didn’t grip me. The book pretty much consists of short biographies of different women from the Regency period. For the first couple of chapters, none of the women grasped my attention. As the book progressed, I became more interested.

The main reason why the book didn’t fully capture my interest until later on was the writing style. The entries on the women are very basic. They don’t do a deep dive into their lives or offer much of an analysis aside from the obvious. If it was written in a more engaging way then that would have helped solve the issue. Also, I think the book would have worked better if it were a collection of essays. It would have been more powerful.

There were some things I did like. I liked that every chapter had a conclusion section. Doing that helped tie together the biographies of the particular chapter. I also liked that the recommend reading was included at the end of each chapter, making them easier to refer to. Lastly, I found the chapters on women in STEM and queer women to be the strongest.

Overall, the book had fascinating content but the execution left much to be desired.… (plus d'informations)