Updates & Reviews... {READ THIS!}

Good Morning and Happy Tuesday my lovely readers! Have you been keeping up with this month's READ THIS! book choice? In case you've forgotten, as announced in this post, November's book to read is:

Image from Entertainment Weekly
I finished it this weekend and, while I am going to keep my full views on it to myself for now, I will tell you that I think you will quite enjoy this novel. In the meantime, while we are at our month's halfway point, I want to share with you some reviews of this book from the professionals (aka people who get paid to know what they're talking about).

Entertainment Weekly, giving it an "A-," states: "The women in The Dovekeepers are physically and spiritually strong, they have elemental female desires when it comes to love, sex, and children, and many of them possess magical powers: In other words, they're Alice Hoffman Women. But in a striking departure from her previous books, the author of Practical Magic grounds her expansive, intricately woven, and deepest new novel in biblical history, with a devotion and seriousness of purpose that may surprise even her most constant fans."

Kirkus' Review also notes the novel's feminist side and says of the novel: "An enthralling tale rendered with consummate literary skill."

Finally, I think the novel's most glowing review comes from The Washington Post: "... [N]othing she’s written would prepare you for the gravitas of her new book, an immersive historical novel about Masada during the Roman siege in the 1st century. "The Dovekeepers" is an enormously ambitious, multi-part story, richly decorated with the details of life 2,000 years ago. What’s more, as Anita Diamant showed so popularly with "The Red Tent," the world of ancient Judaism provides fertile ground for exploring the challenges of women’s lives, and, fortunately, this time Hoffman treats her favorite issues without throwing up much of the fairy dust that too often clogs her work." The reviewer continues to say, "Hoffman doesn’t ignore the larger-than-life leaders and their deadly clash, but her creative path into Masada is from the ground up: not through its generals and warriors, but through its mothers, daughters and wives. The result is a high-minded feminist story of unassailable seriousness."

While not everyone has loved Alice Hoffman's most recent novel (see: The New York Times and The Guardian), it is most certainly worth reading this extraordinary account to see for yourself if you think Hoffman has done the story justice.

Have any of you started reading already? Almost finished or already done? I'd love to hear how you're feeling about the story so far!  

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