The Mad Girls of New York by Maya Rodale
Paperback, 336 pages
Expected publication: April 26th 2022 by
Berkley Books
Genre: Historical
Fiction, Historical Mystery, Historical Romance
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About THE MAD GIRLS OF NEW YORK
The year is 1887, and Nellie Bly is a young woman with a
dream: to write for one of New York’s most respected newspapers. The
editors on Newspaper Row are convinced that women are too emotional and delicate
to report on the harshness of the city’s scandals—and Bly is on a mission to
prove them wrong.
But how does a woman pave a path for herself in such a
cut-throat and male-dominated industry? Nellie’s solution: by playing a part
that only a woman can. Her pitch: she’ll go undercover as an admitted patient
at Blackwell’s Island Insane Asylum for Women, a facility that has long been
rumored to be a deplorable ruin where New York’s unwanted women are
locked away and forgotten. Journalists are turned away at its doors. So it’s up
to a female reporter who can play the part of a mad woman to expose
the truth—and Nellie is just the woman to do it.
The New York World agrees to put
Nellie’s acumen to the test. Nellie will have herself admitted, experience the
horrors of Blackwell’s first-hand, and her editor will check her out of the
facility in one week. But once inside, can she make it out and publish her
findings before a (very attractive) rival journalist scoops her story?
My Thoughts: What
did I read? How can a place like
Blackwell’s Island Insane Asylum for Women even exist? I cannot believe that Nellie decides to a
career for herself as a reporter by going into a place that is known for the
horrors within the walls. I was amazed
at Nellie’s strength, her strong will, and her belief in doing what was right
for the patients of the asylum. The
things she saw, the people she met, and the treatment she endured brought out
her strength to do what she had to just to start her career in New York.
As I read the Author’s Note, I was amazed at how much truth
was in the story. The asylum existed
and what happen there is true. Nellie is
a real person who did go into the asylum to get her story. Nellie came out of the asylum and decided that
she had to do something to change the way the patients were treated. There is so much history and fact in this
fiction book, Maya Rodale did so much research just to get the facts correct
and share the truth.
There is a subplot woven with the book, the story of Jay
Wallace and Louisa Newbold’s marriage. I
enjoyed this part of the story but was interested to see how it would be woven
into the story. As it all came together,
I loved it even more. I never saw it
coming and enjoyed the surprise of the twist.
The Mad Girls of New York is a unique historical story. I enjoyed it from the first page until the
very last. The strong female characters
were refreshing and real. The portrayal
of the men were true to the time. The
storyline was interesting and refreshingly different than other historical
fiction books I have read.
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Purchase your own copy on Amazon
or Barnes
and Noble
Meet Maya Rodale (Taken from her website): Maya Rodale is the best-selling and award-winning author of funny, feminist fiction including historical romance, YA and historical fiction. A champion of the romance genre and its readers, she is also the author of Dangerous Books For Girls: The Bad Reputation of Romance Novels, Explained. Maya has reviewed romance for NPR Books and has appeared in Bustle, Glamour, Shondaland, Buzzfeed, The Huffington Post and PBS. She began reading romance novels in college at her mother’s insistence and has never been allowed to forget it.
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