Book Review of
The Phoenix Crown
Lynn's Review
The Phoenix Crown by Kate Quinn and Janie Chang is a historical fiction book published in 2024.
I love Kate Quinn’s writing and wanted to love this book. I did not. I almost didn’t finish it. I finished it mainly out of curiosity, not because I enjoyed it.
It was a one-and-a-half or two-star read for me. It is a bit painful to give that review on a book by an author I love.
The Phoenix Crown is set in 1906 San Fransico. It starts with the days leading up to the earthquake of 1906 and then follows four women through the events before, during, and after the quake.
I enjoyed that this book included the history of San Francisco and the Chinese during that time period. But a good portion of this book did not feel like a story set in 1906 or one that would have been lived in 1906.
I love historical fiction, but I want it true to the time period. Books like Crow Mary, The Frozen River, The Great Alone, and others all deal with big, important topics, but they do it accurately to the time period they are set in.
The Phoenix Crow took today’s topics, some of which were also in 1906, but wrote them in a 2024 way. It was like a modern-day story, and modern-day people dropped into 1906. It made the whole book feel off to me.
Some may like books that do that, but I don’t. I want my historical fiction to read like it would have happened in the time period it occurred.
If you are going to cover big topics that modern readers want to read about, you can do it in a way that is true to history. You don’t have to write a modern-day story set in history.
I wish I could say more, but I don’t want to share any spoilers. Many will disagree with me, but we are all about honest opinions here.
This book just wasn’t for me.
I am in complete agreement with “Lynn’s review” about the Phoenix Crown. I kept hoping it would get better so I forced myself to read the whole story (it’s a book selection for a book club I belong to). I did not like it any better the more I read it. In fact, the whole story, and the writing seemed very artificial and shallow to me. I know that historic fiction is not meant to be”precisely accurate” and bends to tell the story, but this one reads as though the author found an interesting story and decided to “crank out a book” with no depth, no nuance, no verisimilitude…and as Lynn says above, without creating any feeling of the time period in which it was set. I probably will not read another book by this author.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts! I am glad that I am not alone on my thoughts on Phoenix Crown.
OMG…I’m 3/4 thru this book and I was “in” until the halfway point and I feel exactly the same way Lynn does. As a native of San Francisco and a lover of its history, that’s what drew me in. As an aside, I’m reading on Audible and the readers are wonderful but I became disenchanted with the story and feel a bit duped. I have to finished it now because I’m OCD in that way but I won’t recommend this book.
I am glad that I am not alone. And thank you for sharing that you are from San Francisco and felt that way too. It just didn’t feel true to history.