Book Review: Joanna Shupe’s Magnate

Every book review should incorporate a fun word like Knickerbocker.

A book review a day later than expected is always tastier than one which shows up at the usual time. Well, that’s my rationale, anyway. And what’s on the menu today? Joanna Shupe’s Magnate, one of the four books in her Knickerbocker Club series.

I generally avoid books which focus on the tribulations of being vastly wealthy. I mean, please.

But I am intrigued by that time period in American history. 1870-1900 was an incredibly exciting time to witness. Industrial growth, extremes of financial fortune, and women’s rights are fascinating themes for an author to explore and to weave in and around the central story arc.

Shupe incorporates all three of these aspects of life in the late 1800’s without missing a beat.

That’s significant because I often find novels set in far-away places or times contrived.

Sometimes it feels as though the author needs to justify her cruise down the Danube to a beleaguered IRS employee. “See here,” she can say, pointing vigorously at chapter 19, “That’s an exact description of the meal I ate in a tiny café near Schonbrunn Palace.”

Or, if it’s a historical, she has probably spent hours and hours in dusty archives. All that curling over ancient documents practically requires a professional masseur. “See the fifteen pages delineating the growth of shirtwaist production?” The IRS agent nods sadly and makes a notation. “That was a four hour massage, right there.”

But to my delight, Shupe respects her readers.

The setting and time frame are so intrinsic to the plot, I was never once distracted by a protracted lecture on, say, the history of the Rossini Club. That sort of information was organic to the flow.

As a reader this matters to me. As a writer, it matters more.

Like any good teacher, Shupe holds back a little. She tells the reader exactly what the reader needs to know. Which makes me curious. And a curious reader is exactly what an author wants.

Now I’m hooked.

And I also have a better sense of how to hook my own readers.

Rose Grey has written three romance novels and is hard at work on a fourth. Wednesday is generally book review day. Unless it isn’t. If you liked this post, come visit the rest of the blog at www.rosegreybooks.com. Hot Pursuit and Not As Advertised are available as ebooks and as paperbacks online.