#BlogTour: The Maiden by Kate Foster @KateFosterMedia @panmacmillan @chlodavies97 #TheMaiden #KateFoster #HistoricalFiction #5Stars #Recommended

Book Synopsis:

Inspired by a real-life case and winner of the Bloody Scotland Pitch Perfect Award, Kate Foster’s The Maiden is a remarkable story with a feminist revisionist twist, giving a voice to women otherwise silenced by history.

“In the end, it did not matter what I said at my trial. No one believed me.”

Edinburgh, October 1679. Lady Christian is arrested and charged with the murder of her lover, James Forrester. News of her imprisonment and subsequent trial is splashed across the broadsides, with headlines that leave little room for doubt: Adulteress. Whore. Murderess.

Only a year before, Lady Christian was newly married, leading a life of privilege and respectability. So, what led her to risk everything for an affair? And does that make her guilty of murder? She wasn’t the only woman in Forrester’s life, and certainly not the only one who might have had cause to wish him dead . . .

My Review:

The Maiden is a gripping, absorbing book which I really loved and is one of the best pieces of historical fiction I’ve read.

The story is told from the point of view of two very different women. Lady Christian who has lived a comfortable life of privilege and Violet an orphan who works at the local whore house. The two women have the rather dubious honour of knowing James Forrester and through the book we learn more about their experiences with him as well as the events leading up to James’s murder.

The author does a great job of setting the scene so I often felt I was actually there observing everything alongside the characters. I felt that I could almost smell the stench of Edinburgh and see the grime of Violets world. The different between the rich and poor are starkly highlighted with it being quite difficult at times to read about Violets often horrific experiences at the whore house.

Overall I really enjoyed this book and will be recommending it to everyone. I was immediately drawn into the story and quickly found the book hard to put down as I wanted to find out what happens next. This book is based on a real life case and characters which I always love as it’s always great to learn about a new period in history. At the end of the chapters there are newspaper articles from the case which gives the reader an insight into what happened. It made my blood boil to see how women were treated by the court, with James’s behaviour being excused because he was a rich man while the women were shamed for their actions.

Huge thanks to Chloe from Pan Macmillan for inviting me onto the blog tour and for my copy of this book, though as you can see from the pictures I did buy my own copy too as I couldn’t resist those gorgeous spredges. If you’re a fan of historical fiction I highly recommend this book!

About The Author:

Kate Foster has been a national newspaper journalist for over twenty years and is the Health Editor for the Scottish Daily Mail.

She won the Bloody Scotland Pitch Perfect 2020 prize for new writers for her debut novel The Maiden, which she wrote on a Curtis Brown Creative six-month novel writing course. The Maiden will be published in April 2023. 

She lives near Edinburgh with her two children.