I'm unfamiliar with Nathaniel Hawthorne and Hester Prynne and his book entitled "The Scarlet Letter" but I understand that this book is a fictionalized account of a fictionalized account of their meeting. "Hester" follows Isobel Gamble, a young Scottish seamstress who sails to America in the early 1800s with her husband Edward who is an apothecary. They settle in Salem Massachusetts but Edward is soon off on another ship as a medic leaving Isobel without resources.

I really enjoyed this book. The writing flowed well and the story was easy to follow. Isobel was a strong female character who seemed mature beyond her years and the other characters were well fleshed out. There was a lot of historical information to do with slavery and the underground railway as well as prejudice to do with class and I was left feeling thankful that I didn't live in those times. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this book to friends, especially if you're a fan of historical fiction.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press via Netgalley for the opportunity to read an advance copy of this novel. All opinions expressed are my own.
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I love a good reimagining of other stories, and as a big fan of The Scarlet Letter in high school, I knew I would love Hester. I certainly was not disappointed. I loved that it told the story from the point of view of Isobel Gamble, a young Scottish immigrant who moves to Salem with her husband, with dreams of becoming a dressmaker. While her husband joins the Captain of the ship they came over on for another delivery, Isobel befriends Salem native Nathanial Hathorne.

Albanese's writing is beautiful, almost lyrical at times. As a whole, I couldn't put the book down. This doesn't always happen to me with historical fiction, so when I had a hard time right from the start, I knew it was going to a fabulous read. I can't say enough about the ending too.

Whether you've read The Scarlet Letter or not, you'll enjoy this great story. It's also the perfect fall read.

Thank you St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for the eARC!

Title: Hester
Author: Laurie Lico Albanese
Publication Date: Out now
Genre: Historical Fiction, Literary fiction, Women's Fiction
4⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

🍁My Review🍁

Hester is a very complex reimagining of the main character of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. Set mostly in Salem, New England, this book is the story of Isobel and her life. And maybe she was Hester.
This book is not an easy read. Alternating between Isobel's timeline and the Witch trials in Scotland and Salem, the story tries to draw a parallel. There is a lot to unpack in this story where themes like women oppression, immigration, slavery and naming something which we do not understand as bewitched is easier rather than accepting it. It is a slow book and very atmospheric. I definitely need sometime to process this book.
🌺From a trauma point of view, there is so much in this book that gets my head buzzing. Nathaniel's character is stuck between the past and the present. He carries his ancestors burden. Stuck between that world and the male dominated society, he uses Isobel for his own needs. Isobel has to hide her ability to see colors in words, stuck in a bad marriage and almost on the verge of destitution makes choices for herself that in the long run have bad consequences for her. And there is Mercy a free woman who, is burdened by the prevalent slavery in America during that period but still chooses to help Isobel.
Is this book perfect? No. But I really liked the story due to the fact that in portraying that world, the author has tried to portray both the good and the bad. No one is inherently bad but depending the circumstances people tend to choose a path for themselves without thinking about the consequences.

Hester
by Laurie Lico Albanese
4 stars

I never read the scarlet letter and I feel like reading this I'm missing out on something a little bit. This story is about Isobel a seamstress who came to Salem with her husband in the 1800s after some unfortunate events that happened back home. She has always seen colors when she hears sounds but after her mother told her to hide that and not tell anyone it's hard to keep it hidden in a new place when one person in this new place seems to know her so well. It's a lot of twists and you need to pay a little close attention to what's going on to kind of understand it. It was beautifully written the words flowed so well. For me, it just got a little lost but I was hooked it was a flip-floppy filling for me, I was enjoying it but was lost if that makes sense. I'll add more to my review after I reread it maybe that's what I need to do reread and just focus on one book instead of the three I was reading.

Thank you, Net Galley and St Martins Press for this eARC for an honest review.

Thank you NetGalley and St. Marten's Press for this advanced copy of Hester!
I really liked Isobel and admired her passion for being creative even though she was put down a lot because of her status and being a woman. I thought the aspect of drug addiction was interesting and unexpected for me. I enjoyed seeing Isobel make a name for herself against odds!

Hester by Laurie Lico Albanese is a new take on an old book wherein lies the story of the muse behind Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter.” Isobel Gambol came from a long line of women, alternately named Margaret or Isobel. Many of the women in her family could see “colors.” Her mother warned her to keep quiet about this and other things as it was too easy for someone to call out, “witch.” Her mother taught her to embroider and sew and these things kept her going for years. Her mother died and it was hard for Isobel and her father. Eventually he remarried and she met an apothecary twice her age. He seemed a kind man and she married him. It was not terrible, until she discovered that he had become an addict. Eventually he owed too much money and they were hauled off to debtor’s prison. Her father cleaned up the mess, salvaged what he could, and they set off for the Americas. There she met a young man named Nat Hathorn and things got complicated. Several years later, assuming her husband was dead, she ran from the island with the captain of the ship who had originally brought them there, a friendship had grown between them and he took her and her child to safety.

As most good books are, this one was complicated. It is a fictional version of the story that inspired The Scarlet Letter. Isobel was a complicated character, realistic in her tone and so well-written that it was sometimes difficult to remember she was fiction. Her life was complicated by a poor choice in husbands and the constrictions of the time. The story was a good one and actually more full-bodied than The Scarlet Letter, again dictated by the time in which it was written. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, as convoluted as it seems. It is historical fiction at its best, describing the circumstances of the time and place as thoroughly as possible.

I was invited to read a free e-ARC of Hester by St. Martin’s press, through Netgalley. All thoughts and opinions are mine. #Netgalley #StMartinsPress #LaurieLicoAlbanese #Hester

Reading "Hester" was like jumping in a time machine and travelling back to the 1800s. The details, the setting and the events were written so thoroughly that I felt immersed in the story! I enjoyed reading about Isobel, a strong character, and learning about her unique talent. While this was a reimagining of "The Scarlet Letter" origin, it felt like a story all on it's own and was not necessary to remember the details from the first. Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for an advanced copy! All thought and opinions are my own!

Thanks to #netgalley and #stmartinspress for this advance copy of #hester. The opinions are my own.

4.5 stars rounded down - an excellent read, very evocative of the 1800s in Salem, after the witch trials, but the suspicion of witches and enchantments still pervades society. This is the very imaginative story of a young Scottish girl who marries and older man and when he runs into trouble in Scotland, they flee to the US. He has an addiction problem that becomes her problem. She ends up abandoned in Salem, meets Nat Hathorne and they eventually become lovers while her husband is missing. She gets pregnant and has to leave to save herself & her child.

The bare bones of the plot don't do the story justice. Young Isobel is an independent, talented seamstress with big dreams. Marrying an older man who wants her to stay home and be the 'wife' was difficult and when he developed an addiction, it is even harder for her. Alone in Salem, trying to support herself, she turns to her talent & love of embroidery. This is such a great element to the story and the way it's represented is beautiful and inspiring. Her dreams get buried & revived; she becomes happily in love, then brokenhearted; she is doomed, then resurrected; she is alone & lonely, then makes some dear friends; she is timid, but learns to stand up for herself and her beliefs. It's a story of emotional ups and downs as we grow up & mature with Isobel.

Such a great story and very well done - lots of historical ground covered yet I never lost track of what was happening or who a character was. I particularly enjoyed reading a historical novel set in an era other than WWII! Recommended.

4 scarlet stars

This is my first read by this author and I found it captivating. It is inspired by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s book and the character of Hester. Could it be that Nat had an affair and it led to the writing of The Scarlet Letter?

Our main character is Isobel Gamble, a young woman from Scotland, and from a long line of strong women named Isobel then Margaret, and so on. She’s a seamstress, married to an apothecary named Edward. Edward’s debts force them to flee Scotland for the U.S. They arrive in Salem, and Isobel finds the town reluctant to welcome her. Edward ships out again, leaving Isobel to fend for herself.

Luckily, she has her skills with the needle, and she finds some work. Isobel also has synesthesia which in her case means that she sees colors when she hears voices and keeps this gift under wraps as it can be misunderstood. Remember that she’s in Salem, a bit of history there with witches!

Nat is drawn to the elusive Isobel, but it’s not clear if they can live happily ever after. I enjoyed Isobel’s friendship with her neighbors.

Albanese is an excellent writer, and I enjoyed this one where she brings these characters to life.

What a magical, engrossing read! Historical fiction is not a genre I expect to enjoy, but the cover and premise of Hester drew me in and I'm so glad I stepped into that world. Laurie Lico Albanese has taken ingredients from known history (Salem witch trials, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Scottish immigration to the Americas), added complicated characters with mutii-faceted gifts and challenges, all to create a novel that won't leave the reader alone. I will be thinking about Isobel for a good while to come.

Many thanks to the author and publisher, and to NetGalley, for an advance e-copy of the book for review.

I don't know what I was ultimately expecting with Hester, but I really enjoyed it! I love how the storylines wove together over generations (see what I did there?) and how vibrant the imagery was, even when you felt the area was bleak, grey and ominous. What a treat this book was, and to read it during the spooky season made it that much more fun. What a wonderful book!

I am one of those rare people who actually liked The Scarlet Letter when we “had” to read it in American Lit in high school. I can’t say the same about Moby Dick, but luckily that’s not the retelling we’re talking about here. Laurie Lico Albanese has created this beautiful piece of art in Hester, an imagined prequel, if you will, to Hester Prynne and her world in The Scarlet Letter.
It’s the early 1800s and Isobel Gamble, a twenty-year-old seamstress from Scotland, has emigrated to Salem, MA with her much older husband Edward. They both hold secrets. She has synesthesia, whereby she can see colors for words, and he is addicted to poppy. Isobel is the descendant of an accused witch in Scotland and she’s headed right into Salem, home of the notorious Witch Trials. All the more reason to keep her secret hidden lest she be thought to be a witch. Upon arrival she catches the eye of Nathaniel Hathorne, grandson of one of the judges of the trials; he later added the W to distinguish himself from his ancestors.
When Edward goes back to sea in search of riches Isobel must rely on her needlework to keep her alive. She is reminded to “trust the needle.”
The story alternates between Salem and Scotland, roughly 150 years apart. Nathaniel (Nat) and Isobel’s story is interwoven with Isobel’s struggles to fit into Salem society as well as the depiction of the beginnings of the Underground Railroad.
This was truly a remarkable read. It had depth and richness and strong character development. It’s one I won’t soon forget.
Thank you to NetGalley and St Martins Press for the early review copy!

This book was really enjoyable and kept me interested the entire way through, but if there was one thing I could change, I would probably not have the actual Nathaniel Hawthorne as a main character--at times, it was a little distracting, but it wasn't necessarily a bad choice. It was just kind of weird, but not weird enough for me to dislike the story, and it's pretty easy to imagine him as a different person if it really bothers you.

What a unique story! I was utterly enchanted reading this imagining of the backstory of Hester Prynne and the basis for the classic “The Scarlet Letter.” Many times while reading, I had to remind myself that this was fiction - it just read like a true history that it was easy to think of it as nonfiction.

I also was incredibly drawn to the concept of letters and voices being associated with colors. Here it is laid out that such a phenomenon was associated with being a witch. It actually is a real condition, synesthesia, but as it is rare, it is the perfect thing to have in this story. Widely unknown things were what could lead to accusations of witchcraft back in that period, which just made this story that much more believable - as I could see exactly how it could happen this way.

With that said, this is not a witch story but it is set not so long after the Salem witch trials and so there’s obviously some ties/mentions to witches. Plus our female MC is a descendant of Isobel Gowdie, who was a real woman who was known as the Queen of Witches in Scotland.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and thank NetGalley, St.Martin’s Press and the author for the e-ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

There are a handful of titles I’ve looked forward to with the grabbiest of hands, and “Hester” is one of them. I’m excited, if not absolutely gleeful, to report that it absolutely exceeded expectations. This novel is absolutely a beautiful tragedy, stunning in its sadness and gorgeous in its grief. It’s also a story about the ugly parts of mankind, about how much strength it takes to keep getting back up again when the world keeps knocking you down, and a testimony to what it is to swim against the current when you are at your most vulnerable.

I found myself re-reading passages in this book simply for the loveliness of them, or because I was so lost in the lyrical beauty of them I lost how the thread of them attached to the plot of the book. The book is steeped long and deep in symbolism and metaphor, but not to the point where it becomes cliche or too on the nose. It’s got that same knack of symbolism and metaphor that Erin Morgenstern has, where the symbols and metaphors are so woven into the book that “Hester” wouldn’t be the book it is without them. It would come undone, unraveling at the seams. The symbols are as big a part of the book as the characters themselves. In a way, the symbolism is a character in and of itself. And I’m here for it. This book isn’t in the magical realism genre, but it’s only a short hop away from it. If anything, I’d say it’s slightly mystical in a way.

The cast of characters is the right size for the novel and each is carefully crafted with unique personalities shaped with the primary idea in this novel of how there is darkness and light in every heart. The only purity of heart we see is in children, which is only right, since fear and hatred are learned behavior. Not even our protagonist, Isobel, is pure and righteous. Nor should she be: the message at the heart of this book is we all do what we must (and some just do nothing). Isobel indeed does what she must, and in her journey she becomes harder, stronger, shrewder, and more in the effort to survive the tough life she is living in Salem.

The plot is impeccably crafted, leaving no wasted pages or pacing in the entire book. It’s the perfect length for a beautifully crafted piece of literature. It made for a cozy read on an October day, and I would gladly read it again.

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for granting me early access to this title in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Hester is one of the most unique historical romance novels that I’ve read this year. The author introduces us to a young red-headed vibrant Scottish lass named Isobel Gamble. She has a rare gift where she experiences one sense through another, like seeing color for letters or sounds- “the wind was sometimes a fierce pink and a waterfall glistened silver.” Her mother warned her to keep her “gift” a secret for she may be accused of being a witch. She’s also encouraged to marry well. Shortly after marrying Edward, an apothecary, they sail off to the New World to start a new life. This is 1829, Salem, Massachusetts where the witch trials took place almost 200 years prior.

Isobel has a special talent for needlework and supports herself since her husband left on a ship shortly after their arrival. He has a an opiate problem and has poor moral character. Isobel meets Nathaniel (Nat) Hathorne, a writer and develops a romance with him. She recognized in him someone with a good character. Though he is ashamed of his ancestors who took a major role in condemning innocent women to death during the witch trials. And she is afraid of her “seeing colors” and also had an ancestor who was on trial for witchcraft in the 17th century. The chapters that covered the witch trials were captivating.

The writing is remarkably descriptive and the crafting of the two story lines blended in nicely into an engaging story. I felt Isobel’s character was fully fleshed out. She was a woman who wanted freedom to desire. The writing of the secondary characters were also done very well. This is a fantastic inspirational story of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter.

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for an advance copy in exchange for my review.

DNF @ 24%

This is potentially a case of “it’s not you, it’s me.” However, I was really excited for this book, especially after reading The Scarlet Letter.

I was looking forward to a book that focused more on Nathaniel and Hester. Even more so than that, I was really interested in the parts about Isobel Gowdie because, HELLO WITCH QUEEN.

The book started out very very intriguing and captured my attention almost immediately. But once Hester gets to Salem, nothing is happening. It’s dragging and I just can’t force myself to read books that feel like torture anymore.

Very disappointing.

What's it about (in a nutshell):
Hester by Laurie Lico Albanese is an imaginative look at the person who inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter and how that story came to be.

Initial Expectations (before beginning the book):
I have gotten from the title, cover, and blurb that this is a The Scarlet Letter retelling from Hester Prynne's perspective. I am intrigued because I've always felt I needed to know Hester's side of the story.

Actual Reading Experience:
I absolutely love the authentic feel of this story. The premise is that a particular woman in Hawthorn's life was his inspiration for Hester Prynne's character in The Scarlet Letter. It felt authentic and not like a fictional account. From the period to the relationship and the resulting novel, suspending disbelief was so very easy.
I also enjoyed the women's empowerment angle that runs throughout the story. I love to see the strengths of women all through the ages, especially the periods when it didn't seem like women had any power.
The writing is beautiful and vivid, bewitching the reader into believing the story as truth rather than fiction. And the inclusion of Grapheme-Color Synesthesia was particularly ingenious as it worked in the story in many ways. This is a neurological phenomenon of seeing letters and numbers in particular colors. I know someone who experiences this phenomenon and love how it is handled in this story.

Characters:
Isobel is a woman who can see colors associated with words, letters, and numbers – spoken or written. She is the descendant of Isobel Gowdy, who was once accused of being a witch. She is married to a man who struggles with addiction and is gone for long stretches of time. All she wants is to know love like she sees others experiencing.
All the characters are complex and elicit strong emotions in the reader. Nathaniel Hawthorn is one of these characters, and Albanese paints a very intriguing picture of the author.

Narration & Pacing:
The story is told in the first person from Isobel's perspective. I love this personal style of telling a very personal, almost diary-like story. Isabel tells the reader the most intimate details of her life, bringing the story to life and making it feel as authentic.
The pacing is much as I have found with many works of historical fiction – a bit slow and leisurely with only sporadic action episodes to speed up the pace. I find it hard to read at a leisurely pace, so this was problematic for me, and I struggled to keep my focus as I proceeded through the tale.

Setting:
The setting is Salem, Massachusetts, in the early 1800s. The witch trials, though an event well in the past, still impact decisions made by people, particularly women, regarding how to act and what to say.

Read it if you like:
• Historical Fiction
• Women Empowerment stories
• Stories set in the early 1800s
• Character-driven Stories

Isobel has fled Scotland with her husband Edward, a man who lost everything to his addiction. She hopes to make a fresh start in Salem MA. After only a few short days, Edward leaves on a journey as a ship medic. Isabel is broke (Edward stole all her money), alone, and desperate to find work. her gifts as a seamstress and embroidered, don't seem to be enough to overcome the fact that she is Scottish and looked down upon by almost everyone in town. Of course, even in the new world people are still prejudiced and live by a system that clearly defines the rich from the poor.
This isn't a book that you would imagine kept me up late flipping the pages. It's a slow-burn character-driven tale about Isobel and everything she had to fight to survive. But I did keep reading, wanting just one more chapter. Mostly told from Isobel’s perspective there are also chapters from the 1600s when her grandmother was accused of being a witch. Another tragic time in history, when so many innocent people were tried and convicted based on well, no actual evidence.
Isobel's relationship with Nathaniel Hawthorne plays a prominent role in the story as well. Even if you never read The Scarlet Letter, this book stands on its own for the descriptive details that are found on every page. I loved it. 4.5 stars.

✔ The book starts off well and I was hooked until about one-fourth the way in.
❌ After this point, the story becomes stuck in a quagmire of repetition, with abrupt plot changes that come out of nowhere. The ending ties things too neatly and forcibly establishes the final connection with ‘The Scarlet Letter’. It was overdone.

✔ Isobel is portrayed as a strong and resourceful young woman who doesn’t resort to desperate crying when she discovers her husband has left her alone and penniless. She uses her skills in the best way she can and is actually proud of her talent rather than faking humility. She is shown to be a very practical person in her approach to her work.
❌ Contrarily, Isobel has neither judgement skills nor pragmatism in her personal life. She marries and falls in love for the silliest of reasons and continues to pine for Hawthorne even after it is clear how their relationship is going.

✔ Isobel’s character experiences synesthesia, whereby she associates letters and sounds with colours. Thus there is focus on her unusual synesthetic abilities and how it enriches as well as impairs her work. Through this ability, there is also an indirect reference to the fae world and how it may/may not guide Isobel.
❌ This focus gets repetitive after a while. Even after it is clearly established how synaesthesia works in Isobel’s life, we keep getting detailed descriptions of it. The magical fae elements remain just a potential that are ignored for most of the narrative.

✔ Isobel is shown not just as practical but also as a woman with an empathetic heart. She fights against the bias against her as an “outsider” <b><i>(Doubt #1: Evidently, being a Scottish in the US was almost as bad as being a Black slave. Can someone confirm if this was a fact? I couldn’t find anything to substantiate this claim.)</i></b>; she has “slave” friends and does her best to help them when she can and even treats them as equals; she doesn’t understand why people had slaves.
❌ In other words, Isobel is too “woke” for her time. Her portrayal seemed very unrealistic.
<b><i>(Doubt #2: Can someone also please help me understand: if Isobel is poor and viewed as an outsider, how is she invited to all these fancy gatherings with the elite?) </i></b>

✔ The book is written in dual timeline, with the other timeline going two hundred years back to Isobel’s ancestor, also named Isobel. This Isobel stood trial as a witch and her experiences form this timeline. Her story is intriguing and stresses on how barbaric the belief system of that age was.
❌ I have no idea why this timeline was necessary in this book. How were the stories of the two Isobels relevant to each other except that one was an ancestor of the other and both apparently had the same synesthetic abilities? There was absolutely no connection between the events of the 17th centry with those in the 19th century. It seemed like a way of extending the book to a respectable length of 300+ pages. The back and forth between the timelines also breaks the flow on the “contemporary” timeline of the 1829, making the narration very choppy.

✔ This is marketed as the story behind Hester Prynne. There are thus many nods to the classic, including a repeated mention of the scarlet A, and in the circumstances of Isobel’s life that mimic that of Hester Prynne to a great extent. Knowing the original classic isn’t necessary to get this story, but it will make you appreciate the links better.
❌ The way in which the story is written—Isobel’s first person that continues even after Hawthorne goes his separate way—makes the entire idea of Isobel’s being the “inspiration for Hester” implausible. Moreover, I did not appreciate the portrayal of author Nathaniel Hawthorne in this work. It's not like I'm a fan of Hawthorne but portraying his character in a negative way seemed a bit disrespectful. In realy life, he seems to be an interesting person with a strong opinion on morality and social constructs. In this book though, he is depicted as a weak-willed character who cannot escape his past and manipulates Isobel as per his need. I don’t mind real people being inserted in fiction but the portrayal must be true to their original personality.

✔ There is a wide range of “important” themes in the story: slavery, slave hunts, witch hunts both in Salem and in England, women empowerment, male domination, racial discrimination, subservience of wives in a marriage, adultery, pre-marital pregnancy, immigrant experiences, and so on.
❌ Wasn’t it just supposed to be about Hester Prynne? Why so many other, irrelevant topics?
<i>(On an aside: Weren’t Black people called the N word in that era? If the narration had to be faithful to the time, it had to use the slur, even if the word is inappropriate today. How and why are they being called ‘Blacks”?)</i>

✔ There are some memorable secondary characters though their role is quite minor in the overall story.
❌ The overall character development is very flat. You barely get to see any side of Isobel other than her feelings for Nathaniel and her talent with the needle. Nathaniel’s character changes direction as per the whim and fancy of the author. The connection between Hawthorne and Isobel seems shallow; you barely feel their emotions beyond a surface level.

✔ I love the cover. It incorporates the Scarlet A as well as Isobel’s embroidery skills beautifully.

My thanks to St. Martin's Press for the DRC and NetGalley for the opportunity to read “Hester”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the audiobook.