Tuesday, July 23, 2024

Book review: Serabelle: Where the Wealthy Come to Play by Tavi Taylor Black

 

Serabelle: Where the Wealthy Come to Play

by Tavi Taylor Black

Black Coffee Book Tours

July 23-26

An island sheltered from modern progress. Strict lines between servants and masters. Will crossing them leave her fatally exposed?

Bar Harbor, Maine. 1913. Mabel Rae is smart, reckless, and naïve. So when the ambitious seventeen-year-old joins the staff at a rocky cliffside cottage, she willingly lets the boisterous estate owner's improper advances sweep her off her feet. And the slender young woman dismisses the vulnerability of her position when she discovers she's pregnant with his unacknowledged child.

Brought harshly down to earth after she's caught up in the machinations of a family feud, Mabel decides it's time to take matters into her own hands. But with no money and few rights, she fears a forced marriage to the brutish gardener is her only socially acceptable option.

Is her future forever stunted, or can she become a beacon of change?

In a classic upstairs-downstairs tale, award-winning author Tavi Taylor Black spins an intricate web of idealism's battle against harsh reality. Set at a time when suffrage was at its height, temperance was gaining momentum, and war loomed in Europe, this spellbinding novel shines a light on inequities we still face today.

Serabelle is a darkly humorous work of historical fiction. If you like intricate relationships, lyrical prose, and stories that tackle serious issues, then you'll love Tavi Taylor Black's vivid portrait of the Gilded Age.

Buy Serabelle to test the limits of freedom today!

Universal link for the book on Amazon

About the Author

Tavi Taylor Black earned an MFA in creative writing from Lesley University in Cambridge. In the years following her graduation, Tavi created a collection of short stories, Crazy Happy. Several stories from the collection were shortlisted for prizes, including the Fish One Page Prize, Aesthetica Magazine’s Creative Works Competition and the Donald Barthelme Prize for Short Prose. Other stories have appeared in Alligator Juniper and Opium Magazine online.

Tavi’s debut novel Where Are We Tomorrow? was awarded the 2022 Nancy Pearl Book Award, was a finalist in the 2021 Next Generation Indie Book Awards, the 2021 National Indie Excellence Awards, and a finalist in the Nicholas Schaffner Award for Music in Literature. Tavi lives on Vashon Island where she is finishing up the second in a series of middle-grade fantasy novels. She is currently in graduate school at the University of Washington, studying Library Science.

Review. 1913 was a tumultuous time for America and the rest of the world. This period in history has much to offer, since it was the beginning of inventions we take for granted today. Change was coming and not everyone was ready for the shifts about to take place. Every area of life was touched, and an awakening became clear. In Serabelle, the author has captured these changes eloquently. Women were finding their voice. Cultural indifferences were highlighted, and love questioned. Yet, there were some who wanted to hold on to the old ways as others tried to keep their control. Serabelle encompasses all human failures and victories as you get to know the characters. Whether they are part of the rich or the humbled stable boy, each one’s thoughts were important. Their lives were beautifully captured.
Mabel liked reading, had enjoyed her studies when she was a girl. She made a better student, she knew, than she did a maid. Though her body was sturdy and taut, she was often distracted by an errant thought, one that would lead her down a winding path of ideas and images and take her mind off her work. She found herself staring into space, halting a mundane task. Mabel thought of those women in town at the suffrage meeting. Those women seemed worldly and smart. They wanted things for themselves. They read and thought and organized. Maybe, there was a way for Mabel to be like them.
The writing had an easy flow, clear and to the point. The plotline was easy to follow, and each chapter played an integral part of the story. Line upon line, you are drawn into the intricate web of lies, fraud, and deceit to find truth as they navigated life. A great story that I will recommend. Thank you for the opportunity to read this book.

Goodreads / LibraryThing / Reedsy

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