For some reason I love reading about Hemingway, even though I just can't stand him! Martha Gelhorn was a strong, intelligent woman, and she really makes the book. The author definitely did her research, but the novel doesn't feel dry at all - the characters are colourful and dynamic. I really enjoyed this rendering of Gelhorn and Hemingway's story.

This novel is about Ernest Hemingway's third wife. After reading Love and Ruin, I was excited to read this novel. However, the story was a bit drawn-out and slow. I would have liked it if there were a few scenes that were left out. Still, I recommend this novel for fans of Ernest Hemingway!

Slow but good read. I tried hard to be more interested but it’s an uneventful story that had trouble keeping my attention. I rate this book a 2.6.

If you enjoyed The Paris Wife, you'll love Beautiful Exiles. A wonderful imagining of Ernest Hemingway's marriage to Martha Gellhorn. Extremely well told. Couldn't put it down!


Many thanks to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for my ARC. All opinions are my own.

A wonderful recounting of the marriage of Hemingway and Gellhorn. Well structured, intimate and telling in its details. Fast paced and a revealing look at the creative inspiration that drove these two unique authors.

I read LOVE AND RUIN by Paula McLain a couple of month's ago. That didn't stop me from wanting to read this book. I'm a big fan of biographical fiction and enjoy reading different versions of famous love stories. So, I was all game for another take on the Ernest Hemingway & Martha Gellhorn romance. And, I'm pleased to say that I enjoyed this book immensely.

This time did I have much more knowledge about Hemingway & Gellhorn thanks to McLain's book. However, I loved to once again read about this talented couple that and their doomed relationship. Loved the writing and the dialogue. Gellhorn was such a strong woman that she just couldn't submit herself to a relationship where she was the staying home wife. She wanted to be a war correspondent and in the end, did she choose the path right for her. I find her to be such a strong and inspiring woman. To dare to want the star and not letting anyone stop her. Hemingway may have been a brilliant writer, but he didn't score high on the husband part. At least not in his marriage to Martha Gellhorn. And, honestly, a man that has already left one wife for another woman, well the odds that he would do that again are high...

BEAUTIFUL EXILES is a perfect book for historical/biographical history fans. I'm eager to read more by Meg Waite Clayton.

I thought Beautiful Exiles was a really interesting read and take on a time in history. I think my historical fiction readers will love it! I've purchased several copies for my library already. Thank you so much for the opportunity to read this book. I really loved it!

SO overly disappointed in this book. I'm not sure I can technically say I read it - after about a third of the way in, I simply started skimming and rapidly advancing my kindle, stopping occasionally to see if there had been any improvement, but no. I'm not sure how truly accurate this book is, but if it is accurate, Hemingway was an ass, and Martha was an idiot. The story jumped all over the place, I had no interest in either of their characters, and it was impossible to find any sympathy for either of them. This one totally bombed for me, unfortunately.

First off, a huge thank you to NetGalley and Lake Union Publishing for the opportunity to read and review Beautiful Exiles by Meg Waite Clayton. All opinions are my own.

I have a bit of a love/hate opinion of Hemingway and have read many of his books over the years-I either love them or hate them. I’ve read much about him being an adulterer but I was interested to learn more about his personal life, as well as that of Martha Gellhorn, an extraordinary journalist and writer in her own right.

Most of us already know that Hemingway was a moody jerk (that’s saying it mildly), but a lot of famous writers are/were...right? Having never read Meg Waite Clayton before, I found her writing to be engaging, interesting, and substantive.

Thanks to this book, I’ve come away with a greater understanding of Hemingway’s risky, all-consuming relationship with Gellhorn which in itself was fascinating as it occurred during a volatile time in history.

I’m definitely intrigued with Clayton’s writing too, and am excited to read her other books. My opinion of Hemingway, though....let’s be honest...of course he was an adventurer and a genius....but, still an asshole.

Beautifully written story giving a look into the complicated relationship of Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn. My favorite part of the book was seeing the bravery and strength of Martha. As the book continues, we really see how horribly Hemingway treated her and the flawed yet very real love they shared. I loved learning about Martha's war efforts and how she did not let people hold her back because she was a woman. She was so clearly a strong woman and I am so glad I got to learn about her in that role as opposed to "Hemingway's wife." Highly recommend.

BEAUTIFUL EXILES By Meg Waite Clayton

Ok, admittedly, I knew not much about either Hemingway or Martha Gellhorn. I have read a Hemingway novel but that was the extent. I do however love historical fiction as well as non-fiction. It was a beautiful story the captured my heart and I was not even sure I wsgoing to like Gellhorn immediately. Clayton writes with eloquent fluidity and shares her ability to encompass all traits of both characters with the reader. I hope that this one day becomes a movie. It has nostalgia and is very easy to read and believe. I hope that Clayton has other books or writes more because I do not want this one to be the last one I read.

Thank you to netgalley as well as the author/publisher for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for my honest review.

5+++ stars ⭐️ out of 5

This book seemed really interesting but unfortunately, for whatever reason, I just couldn't get into it and was not able to finish reading it.

Thanks so much to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC for an honest review, as always, all opinions are my own.

The story, from what I did read, follows Martha, a young journalist covering the horrors of the Second World War. After meeting Ernest Hemingway in a dive bar in Key West, she continues her writing and eventually follows him to Spain. I believe they are supposed to go on to have a romance and get married, but I never made it that far.

Let me start off by saying that I don't really love Hemingway. I've only read one of his books, The Old Man and the Sea, and its hyper-masculine themes didn't really jive with me. That being said, I thought the concept of this book, the romance of a well-known author, would be an interesting read. I'm not sure how accurate Clayton's depictions of these real-life fictionalized characters are, but Hemingway at least seemed to reflect what I know of his personality.

I did appreciate how Hemingway's treatment of women in his fiction was called into question fairly early on. It's one of the major issues I have with his writing and I'm glad it was mentioned. I also really liked how Martha and her mother were worked into the story as being more liberal and often polarized their community with these views. It's easy to have these more feminist characters in recent works, but I'm glad Clayton addressed the repercussions of this view in the historical context without just shoe-horning modern day values into a historical fiction.

Overall, I think that this book had great potential but was ultimately a bit too weirdly written to really grab my attention. I never really got into the flow of the writing and found myself skimming sections, especially the closer I got to the point where I just gave up. I'm not sure if it was Clayton's writing style or the way the story was told but I just couldn't get into it.

I'd hoped for a novel really about Martha Gelhorn but this is more of a novelization of her relationship with Ernest Hemmingway. It's still a well written example of the genre and interesting enough but I wanted to understand her. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

Oh this book! This was the first book I'd read by Meg Waite Clayton and it definitely won't be the last. It was just so good and so readable and so different and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Historical fiction can be a bit tricky. Sometimes if they stick too closely to the truth it becomes dry and slow paced but on the other had it can go the other way where it feels like the time and place is just window dressing and the story really could take place at anytime. Clayton walks this line brilliantly. The book never bogged down or became over detailed but at the same time when the chapter heading says Spain in 1937 it IS Spain in 1937.

Coming into this I knew a decent amount Ernest Hemingway and nothing at all about Martha Gellhorn. I've always been fascinated by Hemingway. He's not likable and his demons are so well developed they have their own baggage but he's interesting with blinding moments of brilliance and stunning selfishness. I don't know that I really learned anything new about him here but it really brought alive what I've always thought about him. Martha was the character I really enjoyed getting to know. Prior to this I could only have said that her name was vaguely familiar but what an injustice that is to her! She's brilliant and ambitious and shockingly daring but with enough insecurities to make her relatable. Would I want to go to lunch with her? Not really. She can be abrasive and single minded and her patience for people who can't further her career or her goal can be minimal. However, she's so unbelievably brilliant and fearless and the situations she charged into are so groundbreaking that in my mind she surpassed Hemingway on the list of people I find fascinating.

These aren't easy people and the events that are going around them aren't easy either yet it never felt overdone and reading it was never difficult. It made me want to read more from Meg Waite Clayton as well as more about Martha Gelhorn, the Spanish Civil War and pretty much everything that gets mentioned in the book. This is both incredibly informative and thoroughly entertaining and I so enjoyed getting to know Ernest and Martha even when I didn't always like them.

I watched this absolutely wonderful HBO miniseries called Hemingway and Gellhorn in 2012. I had major movie hangover after watching it. IMBD users didn’t seem to like it as much as I did, but for whatever reason this movie just resonated with me and I was fascinated by this couple I knew nothing about.

I knew that Hemingway was moody and an all around asshole but that he wrote beautifully. Full disclosure, I haven’t read a single Hemingway book—-but I’ve read enough Hemingway quotes to discern that he’s a brilliant writer.

The person I didn’t really know much about though was Martha Gellhorn. In the film she seemed like a cross between Lois Lane and a salty bitch—so naturally, I was intrigued by her. When this book came up for review, I was excited to read it, especially because it appeared to focus mostly on her.

Key West, 1936. Headstrong, accomplished journalist Martha Gellhorn is confident with words but less so with men when she meets disheveled literary titan Ernest Hemingway in a dive bar. Their friendship—forged over writing, talk, and family dinners—flourishes into something undeniable in Madrid while they’re covering the Spanish Civil War.

Martha reveres him. The very married Hemingway is taken with Martha—her beauty, her ambition, and her fearless spirit. And as Hemingway tells her, the most powerful love stories are always set against the fury of war. The risks are so much greater. They’re made for each other.

With their romance unfolding as they travel the globe, Martha establishes herself as one of the world’s foremost war correspondents, and Hemingway begins the novel that will win him the Nobel Prize for Literature. Beautiful Exiles is a stirring story of lovers and rivals, of the breathless attraction to power and fame, and of one woman—ahead of her time—claiming her own identity from the wreckage of love (summary from Goodreads).

One of the things that I was most interested in with this novel was the power play between the two characters. Both were rising literary stars and both had egos to contend with. The attraction between the two was undeniable and yet their passion for writing and their careers, eclipsed their relationship. I was curious to see how that played out in this retelling of their love story. The author had big shoes to fill when it came to these two characters. I think that Clayton rose to the occasion beautifully.

Clayton chose to focus more on the love story between the two for this novelization of two real people and I think that’s what made it work. I think had she tried to incorporate more of their actual work, then it wouldn’t have worked as well. If that was the case she might as well have written a biography. So I like that Clayton went more with the romance part.

The chemistry between Gellhorn and Hemingway is great in this novel. It’s a delicate balance of highly charged sexual tension and tender romance and I think that Clayton stayed true to that piece of their love story.

The one thing I was disappointed in was the portrayal of Gellhorn. In real life, she was this strong, independent woman who wanted recognition of her abilities in her own right. She was bold as brass and a fighter if I ever saw one. That was ultimately what drew Hemingway to her. In many ways I think Hemingway looked at her and saw himself….and perhaps he was right. However in this book that part of her personality is down played quite a bit which I found disappointing.

Novelizations are so tricky. On one hand this is a fictional account of their lives but yet its based on real life events so how much of whats depicted on the pages are the ‘real characters’ and how much of the characters are downplayed or changed to suit the author’s vision? In this case I think there is a reasonable amount of creative license when it comes to Gellhorn’s character—though I could be wrong, as I am clearly not an expert on Marth Gellhron.

For me, this book was a 3.5 star. Clayton nailed the chemistry and romance but when it came to Martha, her character seemed out of place for what I knew of her.

As a final note…..I can’t believe Gellhorn married him. She should have known better! She’s a smart women, she should have seen that scenario coming a mile away.

Challenge/Book Summary:

Book: Beautiful Exiles by Meg Waite Clayton

Kindle Edition, 366 pages
Expected publication: August 1st 2018 by Lake Union Publishing
ASIN B076CJWG7N
Review copy provided by: publisher/author in exchange for an honest review
Recommendation: 3.5 out of 5

Genre: Historic fiction, romance

Memorable lines/quotes:

I will never claim to have a great literary knowledge and this book just proves it. Ernest Hemingway is a well-known author and I am pretty unfamiliar with his work. I am not familiar at all with his history and have no knowledge of his personal life. So when I picked up Beautiful Exiles I was entirely unsure what I was going to be reading. While I still will not claim to be a know it all about Hemingway I will say that I had my eyes opened as to how selfish, demanding, and drunken he is. I was amazed at how he treated those around him and how he thought he was a big gun (which he was in his time) so therefore he deserved special privilege. The part of the story that stuck with me was when he took Martha’s press privileges away by claiming them as his own and then not being able to get to the front lines and tell the real story.

I found this book to be a slow read but enthralling read. I was invested in Martha’s story. I was invested in the era. And I was invested in knowing how it would all end for her. The settings were shared in such detail I could picture the different cities, I could see how the world had changed due to the war, and I could feel the emotion that was felt while visiting them. I enjoyed that some of the cities were visited pre-war and then revisited after the war had hit them or while the war had was going on and you could feel the difference in the people, the city, and the feelings.

Beautiful Exiles is an amazing, eye-opening, heart string pulling story. I am excited to be sharing it and am looking forward to reading more of Meg Waite Clayton’s book.

Going into this I had no idea who Martha Gellhorn was.
Now, I know. She was the woman who in the early 1930’s had
an affair with Ernest Hemingway. Him I’ve heard of!
The author did her job providing numerous details about the
couple, locations, wartime and family.
Martha or the many nicknames Ernest called her was an extraordinary
woman, novelist, war correspondent, best friend and Hemingway’s muse.
Not my usual read but it held my attention until midway through
then I closed the book and didn’t return.
Not the authors fault, I just couldn’t connect.

I’m going to be honest and say Ernest Hemingway is a historical figure I know very little about. In fact, I’m someone who has never read an Ernest Hemingway novel. I keep telling myself I will, but I always find something else to read instead. I will have to change that, at some point, if only to end my curiosity, but for now I was more than willing to give Meg Waite Clayton’s Beautiful Exiles a read. Although this is not a book about Ernest Hemingway in the usual sense of books about the figure, it was a different perspective that did enlighten me about the man.

As I’ve stated, my knowledge about Ernest Hemingway is extremely limited. This means my knowledge about those connected to him is also limited – even more so, actually. Due to this, I cannot say how much of this book is fact and how much is poetic licence. However, I can say this was an interesting read.

Well written, this book had me curious to see what snippet of information we would receive next. I had some notions of where certain things would go – due to the small snippets of knowledge I had – but for the most part, this book was eye opening for me. It certainly left me even more curious about the historical figures within – and I’m not simply speaking about Ernest Hemingway.

There is no doubt in my mind that Meg Waite Clayton has a way of bringing history to life, and Beautiful Exiles has certainly left me interested in digging deeper into the history of the characters in this novel.

A historical fiction book that takes back to the time of Ernest Hemingway and the moments before he meets his third wife, Martha Gellhorn. Martha is much more than one of Hemingway's wives and this book celebrates her life that she had before and during Hemingway.

I went into this book a fan of Meg Waite Clayton and was ready to see what she would do to make this historical moment come alive and I have to be honest it didn't meet my expectations. The book felt dry and just didn't move the way I wanted it to. I didn't expect it to grip me like a mystery/thriller book can, but I have read many historical fiction books where the story flows so fluid that it is hard to put down in hopes to find out what is going to happen next.

The big thing that kept me reading was the feeling of being behind the scenes in Earnest Hemingway's life. I found seeing behind the scenes in his life more thrilling than Martha's story and her part of his story. I wanted to feel more connected to Martha and to care about her and her future and I just couldn't get connected to her.

Rarely do I have such a hard time with a historical fiction book because I get so excited to read and try to decide what is fact and fiction, but I just couldn't do it with this one. I will not count Meg Waite Clayton out and will read her future books, but this one didn't strike a chord for me.