Sadly this was not for me, i found it to be boring and not interesting sadly. Virginia wasn`t interesting and it felt like it was alot of babbeling.

"The Arctic Fury by Greer McAllister has so many twists and turns that you can't help but be engrossed in this fictional tale of an all women's trip into the arctic to find the real life wreck of Sir John Franklin and his expedition that was lost in 1985.

The main character Virgina Reeve takes a group of women into the arctic to find out what happened to the members of the Franklin expedition. She is paid by Lady Franklin who feels an all women expedition is most likely going to find out what happened to her husband and his men however Lady Franklin warns that she will not admit to sending the group into the Arctic unless they find her husband or evidence of his death. Tragically, some members of the expedition die including a rich Boston socialite for which Virginia finds herself on trial after the trip for murder.

The characters in this novel are well written and you can feel exactly what the characters are feeling as the story unfolds. I haven't been so deep into a novel in quite awhile and couldn't wait to get to the end to find out what happens to Virginia and who of the expedition survived.

Thank you to NetGalley for the receipt of this ARC. The receipt of the ARC did not affect my review in any way.

In this amazing historical novel, western guide Virginia Reeve is hired by Lady Jane Franklin to lead an all female expedition to the Arctic. Virginia is looking for a new adventure and this seems to be the chance of a lifetime. But Virginia after a harrowing journey, returns to find herself on trial for murder. The novel switches from the expedition to the Boston courtroom and includes chapters from the points of view of all the women. Readers will be on the edge of their seats to find out what happened on his ill-fated expedition, which women will make it back, and why Virigina is facing the hangman's noose. This is a must-read!!

In alternating chapters, we follow the murder trial of trail guide Virginia Reeve and the expedition she was hired to lead by Lady Jane Franklin in 1853. Reeve, and an all-woman crew, traveled from Boston into the Arctic in search of explorer John Franklin's expedition which set out in 1845 in search of the Northwest Passage.

Even though this was a well done accounting of both timelines, I was disappointed. My expectation was that this would be an intense survival story in the harsh environment of the Far North rather than a courtroom replay. Others may find that more satisfying than I did.

Wow, this book does so well at blending genres, while writing women into a moment in history they were not really allowed to embody, and throwing some fantastic reveals at the reader. I also found the main character so compelling. I cannot wait to read a lot more from this author.

Lady Jane Franklin, during the 19th century, financed several trips of exploration to the Arctic. One such trip, Jane Franklin hired Virginia, a young woman who has worked as an experienced guide in the West. It is the 1850s and women are seldom admired for their strength. Franklin hired Virginia to lead a team of women to the Arctic to search for John Franklin, his men and two ships. However, Lady Jane did not want her name or her money associated with this group of women. Virginia accepted the challenge and Macallister tells the story. The exploration had dire consequences for many of the women and especially Virginia.

Virginia, who was responsible for hiring her crew, was overruled on one person to be included in the dozen women and it is the inclusion of this person which lead to Virginia's being tried for murder. Life aboard a ship, conditions in the Arctic, and the struggles they faced as they lose fingers, ear lobes and other skin to frostbite and team members to the harsh reality of the Arctic. Through it all, some of the friendships endure. It is these friends who ultimately play a significant part in the trial of Virginia, as she is being tried for murder.

The premise of this book was soo intriguing so I was super excited to read this one. I loved how it was told in dual timelines with Virginia in the courtroom on trial for murdering Caprice and the other timeline when Virginia and the other women were on their Arctic adventure. I found both of the timelines very interesting. My only critique with this one is I wish we got more of the Arctic adventure I found that soo fascinating.

I've never read any historical fiction books quite like this one. I loved how it was set in a different time period than I typically read from so that was really refreshing. I also loved how atmospheric this book was, when they were in the Arctic I was snuggled under the blanket because it was making me soo cold! Overall, I really enjoyed this book. If you like historical fiction adventure books I recommend picking this one up!

My Thoughts:

I have several thoughts about this story. I actually have mixed feelings about giving the book an excellent rating, so I settled for very good.

What I love about the story is the unique storyline: An all female group of inexperienced Arctic explorers during an age when women were living in a man’s world (and men were not completely familiar with the Arctic). One woman is an adventurer, explorer, and trailblazer. Her experience is in western North America. A second woman states she is a world traveler and adventurer, but she is used to having servants. Their precarious adventure kept me reading to the last page. I want to know what really happened? I want to know why Virginia Reeves is on trial?

I enjoyed the different narrator voices from a few of the women. This gave me a broad perspective of the whole group. It gave me a perspective of Virginia Reeves (instead of being in her thoughts and voice).

And speaking of Virginia Reeves:
Virginia Reeves has a past. She carries guilt, and not just from the Arctic adventure. The story will finally reveal her life in the last chapters.
Virginia is an enigma. She is a different type of woman than most of the women in America in the mid 19th century. She is a bit of a mystery as to why she is the way she is. I felt an investment in her story because I want to understand her character. I want to know her background story.
Virginia harbors a chip on her shoulder. Several times she is snubbed and judged by people (men and women) who dislike her lifestyle, mannerisms, and language. However, the people want to use her particular skills for their advantage.
She comes across as coarse, overly confident, and arrogant. This is not to her benefit because I wondered early on if she was being played?

Bottom line: The Arctic Fury is the story of people and how they act and react to opportunities, events, and hardships. It shows people who in the top crust of society have money to pay others to do their work and to even administer their own justice.

What I dislike about The Arctic Fury.

The adventure and exploration the women took part in changed their lives. For some of them it ended their lives. I expected Virginia Reeves’s character to transform. At the least a character change. I feel to make the story believable she’d be physically scarred in some way. Some of the survivors had scars. Why not Virginia?
Another female character who I did not like through most of the story had a big transformation. She rose above the others and I admire her. This also gave the story a twist. A transformation in a character I didn’t like but now find remarkable and memorable. In the end who is the real heroine?

I did not learn about the clothing and supplies the women had for their trip. These things are remarked in passing (not in-depth).

I want to read about the scenery. The descriptions of the Arctic is brief. To me, the Arctic is a gigantic and untamed character. It is worthy of vivid and graphic description that makes a deep impression.

Source: NetGalley e-book. I also purchased the paperback copy at Barnes and Noble. I was not required to write a positive review.

Greer Macallister’s thrilling historical fiction novel, The Arctic Fury, is a love letter to adventurous women, unlikely friendships, and finding possibilities in a bleak, unforgiving wilderness. Set in the 1850s, a mysterious, wealthy woman hires guide Virginia Reeve to lead an expedition to find her husband lost in the Arctic North. The novel opens in court—Virginia is on trial for the murder of one of the women she led into the icy tundra—and the narrative moves between the trial and the expedition, giving multiple characters voices and perspectives in the process. In the pages that follow, readers are led on a literary adventure: into the secrets, tragedies, and twists of their expedition, as well as through their individual pasts that led them to the edge of their known worlds.

What an inspiring, daunting journey! I love historical fiction and the experiences I imagine while traveling through history in the story. This story has certain actual events and actual people from history tossed in with the fictional story, and I googled a lot of information because the story piqued my interest!
We follow Virginia and the diverse collection of fellow female adventurers on their Artic expedition, thanks to an insistent Lady Franklin who wants to know what happened to her husband. The story goes back and forth from their adventures to the trial where Virginia is accused of murdering one of the several women who never returned from the expedition.
I'm impressed with the research involved in this story. I felt as if I was back in the 1840s on the ship, traveling across the frigid tundra, fighting for my life, and caring about the band of women thrown together. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me a copy of this interesting novel.

RATING: 2.5 STARS
2020; Sourcebooks Landmark

Arctic Fury is my second novel by Greer Macallister, and while I enjoy the historical period they are set, I am finding a hard time loving the story itself. Like Girl in Disguise, this story focused on one woman in a man's world. I found that part of the story interesting, and my curiosity kept me reading. I wish we got to hear from the other women on the expedition. Hearing only character, I started to get a bit bored with the slow part of the book. I think if it wasn't for the trial, I may have given up if I read this in print. The audio moved me long a lot more. I do want know more about the Franklin Expedition which I have heard of but don't know the details of.

***I received a complimentary copy of this ebook from the publisher through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own.***

This book was absolutely amazing.

The time period is 1853 and the premise is to trek into the freezing cold on a search for the Franklin Expedition. Now I didn't think that I would like this one.. but I actually ended up loving it. I think this has broad readership appeal. I don't think you have to be a certain type of reader to enjoy this. Just read it. You can thank me later!

I very much enjoyed this book! A historical fiction book with a slight dual timeline. No big time jumps, which I was very happy with. I loved the historical aspect of it, the fact t hat it takes place in a location not often written about, and that it includes a courtroom aspect. Multiple POV without going overboard and making it confusing. A nice little twist. There really wasn't anything to NOT love about it. Ms. Macallister really did well with this one.

Virginia Reeve is on trial for the murder of Caprice Collins. Virginia has a past that haunts her and she doesn’t want revealed. Virginia is asked to lead an expedition of 12 women to the Arctic to find out what happened to Lady Franklin’s husband’s arctic expedition. The story alternates chapters from the trial to Virginia’s expedition. It keeps you in suspense until the very end. You learn about each of the women in detail. Some survive and some don’t. You will feel very chilling at times as you go on this journey with Virginia and the girls,. Well written and a pleasure to go on this journey.

THE ARCTIC FURY by Greer Macallister is a work of historical fiction which was a LibraryReads selection for December 2020. Initially, I was intrigued by the premise:Virginia Reeve, a young female guide on the overland trail to the Pacific Ocean is asked to lead a different expedition. This time, a wealthy woman asks Virginia to guide 12 women in their 1855 quest to find The Franklin, a ship missing in the Arctic. I enjoyed the beginning and learning about the character traits of various expedition members, but then the book seemed to drag. Maybe that was my own dread of the harrowing conditions they would face, as I silently encouraged them to turn back? Macallister adds to the realism by offering differing perspectives as the voyage continues and by employing flashbacks between the journey and an ensuing murder trial. Fans of adventure stories like Into the Wild may enjoy this story of survival and female courage; based on true events.

This was a cleverly crafted plot about an artic expedition consisting of twelve women. The characters are complex and flawed in a variety of ways. The writing itself is atmospheric and I felt transported to their expedition and then to the courtroom as we see Virginia on trial. I enjoy escaping with this story.
Many thanks to Sourcebooks Landmark and to NetGalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

Thank you Netgalley, Sourcebooks Landmark and Greer Macallister for free e-ARC in return of my honest review.

A dozen women join a secret 1850s Arctic expedition-and a sensational murder trial unfolds when some of them don't come back.
Virginia Reeve, the leader of the expedition, finds herself betrayed and lost when she comes back from the Arctic. She was arrested and tried for a murder of one of the participants, a daughter of one of the prominent families in Boston. The story of expedition unravels during the trial and Virginia’s flashbacks to the past.

I liked the story, I truly enjoyed following women on their cruel adventure. I think plot-wise it was nicely build and the story is cohesive.

Character-wise The Arctic Fury is phenomenal. Virginia Reeve, as a leader, was perfectly portrayed though her past and present, she came up as full living character, as a person that excited back in 1850s. She was seen through many eyes during the trial and their perception of her only added up to the fullness of her character. I particularly liked that her character did not have a soapy love story. There was one but it was as tough as she was.

Overall, good solid enjoyable read for my Historical Fiction fans. The Arctic Fury is so well-written that I believed the story truly might have happened.

Listen, this book is absolutely ridiculous and genuinely infuriating to read. My recommendation is to not do this. I suffered through it so that others would not have to.

Polar exploration is my ~thing. The Terra Nova expedition namely (Antarctica > The Arctic), but I have more than a passing knowledge on Franklin and his doomed search for the Northwest Passage. It became very (very!) clear very (very!) quickly that polar exploration is _not_ Greer Macallister’s ~thing. Any research she did feels limited to cursory wikipedia searches. Mary Shelley described the Arctic better than Macallister and she wrote Frankenstein in 1817.
If you, like me, are looking for intense tales of survival in the world's harshest conditions, don’t pick this book up! You will certainly not find it here. You will find out apparently how easy it is for 8 women to sledge through Canada with a team of dogs, carrying a ding dang whaleboat filled with supplies. It caused them no problems at all! They were simply very cold and tired. No mention of terrain being an issue! Smooth sailing. Every single piece of literature written by explorers who actually _did_ sledge and haul boats claims otherwise but whatever.
The women are aware of a cache of food left by John Rae’s expedition, decide to trek 3 days out of the way to get to it and then suddenly the _servant_ remembers that the company that furnished the Franklin Expedition got into trouble for improperly sealing the food containers and it might be bad. So they’re just like “hm nah we’ll pass” and leave. They are at real risk of starvation! Someone was literally eating weeds (???) the day before but they decide to not even investigate the food, oh my god.

I started a list of everything that made me angry about The Arctic Fury but by page 200 I just wanted to finish the thing so I stopped and will instead limit my count to 3.

1. This book feels misogynistic. I don’t know why the author made a point to have Lady Franklin bring up how important it was to send an all lady expedition because women are so much better and smarter and could do a better job, and then have every single woman be entirely unsuited, inexperienced, and idiotic. Was the author trying to show that women really _aren’t_ suited for polar exploration? Because if I was a misogynist, she’d have me convinced. The idea that this expedition would be Super Dooper Secret is laughable and so very unlikely!!! Not even a papertrail? Why? There were plenty of lady’s explorer clubs at the time and while they might not have been funded by like, The Royal Society, they would have been fine soliciting money from like minded bluestockings. I have real problems with Virginia apparently not caring a whit that she had no say in any of the preparations for the expedition. She didn’t even meet half the crew until they were underway-- literally A WEEK after meeting Lady Jane for the first time and being hired. What sort of leader wouldn’t insist on checking supplies or the crew? It’s literally life or death and she just left it up to some guy she didn’t even trust. Didn’t even insist on physicals for the women she was taking with her who might have noticed things like one of them was PREGNANT? Oooooooook. They didn’t even think about clothes since the only thing that seems different about their Arctic outfits is that they wear split skirts. Shocking!!!!!! And best of luck surviving in that. They all deserved to perish.

2. Which brings us to the characters, who are ridiculous and entirely one dimensional. We don’t have a single clue who they are. She keeps cycling through names (the book is written from different points of view and from different times, which is annoying) and honestly it’s difficult to tell them apart. Virginia is the leader, Caprice is the headstrong rich one, one of them is a lesbian, one of them isn’t a lesbian, one falls off the mast of the ship and dies, one doesn’t have a tongue but is somehow the translator, one is a journalist, one is a ~~~slutty servant who was sent all the way to the Arctic because she was pregnant (??? wHaT ???), one is a transgendered twin ((?? WhAT ??)), and who knows, there might be more but it doesn’t matter. AND HOW ABOUT the dog expert who decided to kill herself and send the dogs running so that the rest of the starving women wouldn’t eat them. W H A T and WHY. Both the women and the dogs are going to starve to death but her dying dream is that they’re adopted by some Esquimaux family. Good god.

3. This book is weirdly ~woke about stuff and then also has some unexpected (and frankly unwanted) religious overtones by way of Virginia. For example! The ~~slutty servant who was pregnant says the following absolutely ridiculous thing for a servant to say in the 1850’s after someone else says they’ll be the first women to step foot in this part of the Arctic--
“First white women...the Esquimaux were here. Are here. They’ve forgotten (this is literally a direct quote, I took a picture of the page and I don’t understand why it says “forgotten” either) more about surviving in this environment than we’ll ever know”.
What the shit is that? Girl would have been _entirely_ uneducated but she’s whippin’ out some 2021 gender and race theory like she wouldn’t have been super racist IRL. It’s just so dumb. No thought was given to this at all. Virginia keeps talking about God and praying so much that I had to double check to make sure it wasn’t actually christian fiction, which I found incredibly annoying.

Listen, this book simply was not good. There are better fictional books about polar exploration. Go read one of them instead.

Virginia Reeves is looking to escape her recent past, what she continuously calls "the very bad thing" that she did. No one knows about this very bad thing (except for one person). When Virginia is contacted by the wealthy Lady Jane Franklin to lead an expedition to try to locate her missing husband, John Franklin ( and/ or ) his ships, Virginia jumps at the opportunity. The catch: Virginia must lead an female team. Can women succeed where, so far, men have failed?

I loved reading this book. It was interesting, funny and (sadly) even grotesque at times ( mother nature can be very cruel). I highly recommend picking this one up, and no time like a winter day like right now. Thank you #netgalley and sourcebook landmark for this eARC, in return for my honest review.

DNF - I really tried for weeks. I just didn't like the characters. I will try again, maybe. Sorry. :-(