Historical fiction books with present/past stories

I can't believe I haven't written a post focused on historical fiction so far, especially because it's one of my favorite genres!  In fact, I read so much historical fiction that there's no way I can cram it all into one post, so I'm going to subdivide it into multiple sub-genres.  For today, I'm going to focus on one of my most favorite types of books - books that go back and forth between two time periods, usually a present day and historical story.  I don't know exactly what it is about this kind of book that appeals to me, but I tend to just LOVE books that are structured this way.  Plus I respect that it must be trickier to write these books, as the author ideally needs to make both story lines equally compelling, and also to find a connection between the two stories that makes sense without being too obvious/gimmicky.

Books I Hated

So far on the blog, I have focused on books that I love.  Obviously, if I'm recommending books to people, I'm going to talk about books I love.  But I thought it would be fun for a change to talk instead about books I hated, since I can get equally worked up about about that.  And I mean really hated.

I'm also not going to include any books that I had to read for school, rather, these are all books I read on my own, either voluntarily or for book club.

And since I have this weird compulsion to finish reading every book I start, these are all books I actually suffered through to the end.  Occasionally there have been books that I hated at the beginning but which actually grew on me as I read them.  But the books below are books I finished and still hated.  I don't mean disliked, but HATED, and which still inspire me to feelings of white hot hatred!

From the Top 10 Archives - Jen's 10 Favorite Books of 2003

Part of an ongoing trip through time looking back at my top 10 book lists, today we'll re-visit my 10 favorite books from 2003.  As a reminder, that means books I read in 2003, not necessarily books published that year.

Since I started writing down all the books I read for fun all the way back in 1992, I can tell you that 2003 was the year I read the least amount of books ever - only 44 books.  I know a lot of people would consider that a huge reading year, but for me that's not so many!  So this top 10 list therefore represents almost 1/4 of the books I read in 2003.

Book club books

At Passover seder at my parents' house two weekends ago, my dear family friend Liz and I were discussing our respective book clubs and good book club books.  Conveniently, while this question was fresh on my mind, my book club met last week.  Since I happen to have a Goodreads shelf keeping track of all the books we've read as a book club, we also took some time to scroll through the list and talk about the books and discuss which ones were the best.

5 Star Review: What You Don't Know About Charlie Outlaw

For the first time this year (and since I started this blog last December), I read a book which deserves a 5 out of 5 stars - What You Don't Know About Charlie Outlaw by Leah Stewart.  So far on the blog I have not written any posts focused on a single individual book, but reading a book that excellent seems to merit it.  Since I know for sure it will be on my top 10 list of 2018, why wait until the end of the year to tell you about it?