This might be my favorite book of 2021. I could not put it down and flew through it in about a day. I can not recommend this book enough to everyone I know.

I love a good sweeping epic novel and this one does not disappoint. Adventure, romance, heartbreak , and triumph. The writing was eloquent and beautiful. The characters were interesting and well developed by the author. I loved the ending, and did not want it to end. Thank you for the ARC.

Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead is an amazingly beautiful book. This is an epic book. It’s epic in size-over 600 pages. And it’s epic in scope. This is a story of Marian Graves-epic female badass. This is also the story of her twin brother, Jamie Graves-epically challenged artist who struggles to understand and fit into his world. They have an epically challenging beginning, and face other more epic challenges as they grow. Then they face one of histories most epic battles-WWII. After the war, Marian sets off on one last epic journey-to circumnavigate the globe from North Pole to South pole in a Great Circle.

This book spans one hundred years. It is not a weekend read. It’s not fast paced. But it is immersive. If you like epic family dramas that span multiple historic time periods, you’ll love this story!

Thank you to #netgalley and #knopfpublishinggroup for the advanced e-copy of #greatcircle.

I'm a big Maggie Shipstead fan, having read and loved both of her previous novels. She's the kind of writer where you can easily get lost in her elegant prose. Great Circle is written in the popular dual time frame about a famous fictional aviatrix of the past and the actress hired to play her in a movie in the present. I enjoyed both time frames and the characters were very deep and well-developed. The book has plenty of twists and you'll care greatly about all of the characters. This book will be fabulous for book groups...so much to discuss.

This was an interesting story about a female pilot and the many paths she crossed in her life. I feel it was unnecessarily detailed and about 200 pages too long. Thank you Netgalley for the eARC.

For fans of Paula McClain and Beatriz Williams, Great Circle is a fantastic historical fiction novel set between 1914 and current day, full of strong female characters. Marian and Jamie Graves are twins who as babies survive a shipwreck and are sent to live with their uncle in Montana. As they grow, they are left to make their own way in the world as their uncle becomes less and less of a presence in their lives. Marian works from an early age to become a woman pilot, doing whatever she must to make her dream reality. Hadley is a present-day actress trying to break free of her defining roles when she is hired to play Marian in a film being made about her life. This novel touches on so many women's issues it will make for fantastic book club conversations.

A totally immersive, unhurried, epic female adventure story. I can’t remember the last time I felt this satisfied with a novel. An absolute must read for fans of historical fiction!

Things to know:
▻ A joy to read!
▻ Beautifully rich prose
▻ Vividly drawn characters and scenery
▻ Courageous & defiant females
▻ Read w/Jenna Book Club Pick

Characters:
▻ Marian Graves: badass female aviator challenging the 1950s patriarchy while pursuing a dream to become the first pilot to circumnavigate the globe over the North and South Poles.
▻ Hadley Baxter: Hollywood actress cast as Marian in a film; redefining herself in LA.

Read this…
…at a leisurely pace; ideally under a blanket of summer blue and white skies. Marian’s journey will inspire you to find those dreams in the clouds above, grab hold, and push the limits.

▻ ▻ ▻
Thanks to Knopf for the free egalley.

Thank you to NetGalley and the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group for the advance copy of Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead. This is my first book by this author. What an adventurous book! It wasn't necessarily action-packed, though many of the flight scenes were very fun to read, but it is a very dense book. So many lives, life events and paths explored. While some parts are very s-l-o-w going, the ending was well worth it! A good read. I will be checking into this author's other books.

Wow!
An amazing and epic novel that spans a century and the entire planet.
This book is the story of Marian Graves who disappeared in 1950 while attempting a north-south circumnavigation of the earth.
Marian and her twin brother Jamie were more or less orphaned in a shipwreck in 1914, sent as babes to their paternal uncle in Montana and were raised by him.
During their coming up years the town is visited by a couple who fly a small plane and Marian becomes obsessed with planes and her only life goal is to fly them.
This novel has it all.. shipwrecks, the depression, bootlegging, whore houses, world war, and much more.
This is a dual timeline, there is also in current time, an actress named Hadley who is playing Marian in a film.
I am glad that the Hadley portions were not long and that the book was mostly Marian’s life because those were the great parts of the book!

I will be reading more of this author!

Thank you to the publisher through Netgalley for this free ebook!

CW: grooming, sexual assault, substance abuse/addiction, losing loved ones

This book has wrecked me.

At 600+ pages, this book is a beast. The first 100 pages or so were a little hard to get through, as there is so much exposition, but once you get into the heart of it, there’s no turning back.

While I adored this book and found my heart ripped apart time and time again, the writing is just so beautiful and almost peaceful (?), despite the war background or the struggles of being a woman who knows what she wants during that time.

There were many moments when I questioned why a particular character’s entire life story was given, and though I don’t think the book needed to be 600 pages, I don’t think any of this ruined the book for me. There were definitely moments that could’ve, and maybe should’ve, been cut. But after seeing the book as a whole, I’m not upset at the length.

The thing that fell the most flat to me was all of Hadley’s storyline. Though it was interesting, and maybe I would have loved it if it were its own separate story, I found that it paled greatly in comparison to Marian’s story.

All in all, a beautiful read that I found reminiscent of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group for the eARC.

Great Circle is a lengthy book about a fictional female aviator, Marion Graves, in the early 20th century and while well-written, there was too much detail that dragged the story down. In addition, the dual storyline didn't work for me this time. I didn't see any purpose in Hadley's timeline and the purpose it did serve could have been achieved in another way. In the end, it just distracted me from Marion's story, a much more interesting read.

Negatives aside, there was still much that was enjoyable about Great Circle, from the real-life characters weaved into the story to the descriptions of all the different locales that Marion lived in, visited and flew over -- the Northwest, Alaska, England and the Antarctic are just a few.

Thank you to Kopf and NetGalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I was really interested in reading this book based on the description and for the fact that it was the May pick for the Read with Jenna book club. The story was interesting. However, it just dragged on and on and on and on. To the point that when I got about to page 460 (of 627 pages in total), I started just skimming and then ended up just reading the last 2 chapters and called it done. I don't mind long books but this one just seemed to fill pages with a bunch of details that were not at all necessary to the story.

"Great Circle" is an epic about a female pilot, Marian Graves, from the early 20th century. Her goal is to circumnavigate the globe by flying over the North and South Poles. There's a mysterious element to what happened on her big flight. The vast timeline brought so much depth and insight into the story. Through Marian’s love of flying, we learn about other great pilots and their accomplishments in aviation. In WWII, we learn about combat artists and the role women were allowed to play in furthering the war efforts. And throughout the fictional lives of the characters, we learn about love, sacrifice, determination, loyalty, unrequited love, and loss. There are dual plot lines going on in this book and many details that do not add much to the story and could have been omitted for a lesson cumbersome book. I don't mind long books as long as the words given are adding to the story. There are many areas where the story line goes on tangents that don't add to the overall storyline. Well researched and detailed for sure but am glad it ended and I don't have to continue reading to get to the points. It is a good book although rather long that it needed to be.

Thank you to Netgalley. the author and publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

An expansive novel of historical fiction, Shipstead uses dual narratives to tell the story of female aviator, Marian Graves, spanning from the early 1900s to present day. The story opens with actress, Hadley Baxter, who was orphaned as a child and left to grow up with her uncle who was more like a friend than a parent. Because he was in the showbiz industry, Hadley easily found herself there as well as a child star later to become the lead actress in a hit series called Archangel, however, her personal life seemed to be a fiasco. After a very public breakup with her co-star/boyfriend, she leaves the show and is presented with the opportunity to play Marian Graves in a film based on a book written about her life. As a child, Hadley had read Marian’s flight logbook that was published after her disappearance and for her, this was an opportunity to come to peace with her own past and to understand a woman that she felt a great connection with.

Marian, much like Hadley, was, for all intents and purposes, orphaned as a child with her twin brother, Jamie, to grow up with their uncle (much like Hadley’s uncle, he was more a friend than a parent). She grew up fierce and independent and because of a chance encounter with a husband wife flying duo, becomes enamored with the idea of flight. Throughout her life, Marian’s one goal is to become a pilot and she stops at nothing to accomplish this. She poses as a boy so that she can work odd jobs, some even illegal. She meets a wealthy bootlegger, who sponsors her flight schooling (but at what cost?). Eventually her aspiration is to fly a great circle around the south pole crossing over Antarctica. Later, her logbook is found on the poles and published, but many are left wondering what ever happened to Marian, and who was she really?

There was much to really love about this book, I quite enjoyed how the author incorporated stories of real female aviators such as Jacqueline Cochran, Amy Johnson, and, of course, Amelia Earhart to tell the story of Marian. What I enjoyed the most though was the idea that we may have an idea of who someone is from history and stories told about that person, but really, we don’t know a great deal about them at all. The historical part of the story, as well as the many different relationships between Marian and Jamie, or Marian and her long standing on/off relationship with Caleb, and even her relationship with Ruth all felt very real and because of that I feel they were well written.

What I didn’t like about the book, and what I felt kept me from giving it a 5-star review, was the length. I don’t feel like this book needed to be quite as long as it did. There were so many passages filled with superfluous detail that my brain tends to see the words but not really comprehend what I am reading when so much detail is given that it takes away from the story. It didn’t need 608 pages to be told, it could have been done in about 400 I would imagine. As an author, I’m sure it’s difficult to decide which parts should and should not be kept in the story, but Marian is a fictional character and that story could have used some editing down. Also, I found myself at times really disliking Marian and not really caring about her. I enjoyed Jamie’s story more than hers because I cared about him as a character. Marian came across as very selfish and egocentric which may have been the point of her character, but it made for a hard read on long passages about her.

Either way, I do think this book is worth a read, but one who really loves history and an author who describes things in great GREAT detail, would get more out of this book than a casual historical fiction reader such as myself.

Some books are meant to be inhaled poolside next to a frosty drink; other books are meant to be read reverently in the quiet of the night. Great Circle is a nightstand tome, one to turn to when you can fully appreciate the beautiful lyricism of each sentence and the epic scope of the history that unfolds in its pages. I was a little daunted by the length and the subject matter (airplanes and WWII are not my favorites), but I'm forever glad that I was able to read this gorgeously written book. The book begins with a shipwreck in 1914 that changes the lives of infant twins Marian and Jamie Graves; the twins are raised by their uncle in Montana, but their lives take very different courses. Great Circle does a fabulous job bringing to life the entire first half of the twentieth century, from WWI to Marian's Antarctic flight in 1950. Also interspersed throughout are scenes from Hadley Baxter's journey to understand and portray Marian in a film adaptation of her life. I didn't always enjoy Hadley's intrusions into the historical narrative, but I loved the way that Shipstead used Hadley's research for some final reveals about our historical players. I am sad to say goodbye to this book, but I know that I'll be thinking about the characters for a long time. Highly recommended for patient readers who enjoy historical fiction, epics, and literary fiction. Many thanks to Netgalley and Knopf Doubleday Publishing for the librarian preview copy!

I read wonderful reviews but the actual novel was even better than I expected. Not just about a woman pilot, it is about the American west, art, World War Two sexuality and women’s place. One of the best books I’ve read.

Great Circle tells the story of a famous female aviator lost at sea and her rise in the field of flying. Marian Graves grows up an orphan with her twin brother Jamie in the rough and rural landscape of Montana in the early 1900s. You observe as she stops at nothing to learn the art of flying and become a pilot through unusual and sometimes sketchy means.

While you're introduced to Marian, you also meet tabloid heavy starlet, Hadley Baxter, who attempts to escape being pigeonholed from her lost role as a star-crossed lover and heroine of a series like Twilight with a superhero twist. She gets the coveted role in a new film about Marian and starts researching her role, gathering some unexpected information and insight. Both women seek out the near impossible--aviation and independence for Marian, love and acceptance or maturity for Hadley.

This is a very different turn for the author who wrote two great books before this. I was so excited to get a copy of this because I've been waiting for a new book from her. Her latest differs from the last two and is a sweeping saga with intriguing characterizations, good stories, and superb descriptions of the landscape.

Unfortunately, it is such a long book that some parts drag. Also, if you're not interested in the mechanics of flying, those parts become tedious. Same goes for the wartime scenes during World War II. You meet some interesting characters, but I would rather delve into the characters instead of the less colorful flying scenes.

The last flight, though, at times, is incredibly exciting even though you await for the gloom of the lost flight with bated breath. The author ties up the endings for Marian and the characters in her story very well without being too neat about it. As for Hadley, we never go past a certain point, which felt disappointing.

The author put a lot of heart and research into this book, so I don't really want to discount the effort. I'm not interested in dryer topics like flying mechanics and more in-depth descriptions of the terrain or animals near the terrain, but other readers may like it. No matter, it was worth reading, and I'm still thinking about it.

Great Circle spans the wilds of Prohibition-era Montana, the blustery Pacific Northwest, the unforgiving chill of Alaska, the glitz and glamour of Hollywood and the movie-making business, and the stark, brutal dangers of Antarctica, from the early twentieth century to modern day.

In interconnected stories--which felt equally compelling to me--Shipstead brings to life these disparate places and times and focuses on various colorful characters within them.

Great Circle traces events starting with a sinking ocean liner in 1914 and the introduction of Marian and James, twin babies rescued from that tragedy; it follows the path of the twins' lives as they grow up; the story tracks young Marian's ignited passion for aviation and her adventures; and the book injects a modern-day story line in which a famous young actress takes on the role of Marian for a film.

Shipstead has created two independent, defiant, appealingly strong young women split by time (and, secondarily, the complex male characters they each love as family or romantic partners). Both of the main characters are orphans, both were raised by indulgent, imperfect uncles, and both are constantly reinventing themselves as they aim to live fulfilling lives, but otherwise their situations are altogether different.

Shipstead is a wonderful writer, and I loved every word of this. Both of the timelines had me hooked.

I received a prepublication copy of Great Circle courtesy of Knopf Publishing Group and NetGalley.

An immersive, epic book. The story largely focuses on two characters: Marian, an aspiring pilot with a life that is truly exceptional, and Hadley, a popular Hollywood actress getting dragged through the tabloids. Great Circle throws A LOT at you throughout nearly 600 pages: a sinking ship, a plane crash, World War II, history lessons on Charles Lindbergh...and that's just scratching the surface. For a long book, it never drags or feels repetitive. New characters are introduced and they never feel unnecessary. I can imagine this being a terrific miniseries. This is a very special book.

Have you ever picked up a book, its cover nothing phenomenal nor eye-catching, read the synopsis and thought, “Ngeh, seems rather benign but let’s give it a go” and then next thing your know, you’re 250 pages in at nearly 3am on a Sunday, and not ready to put the book down or go to bed?

Maggie Shipstead’s Great Circle is that book and my biggest surprise read of 2021 (so far).

I chose this book on NetGalley because it was in the Read Now list, which could either end up being a bomb or a treat.

I'm glad it's the latter.

There's a lot of historical back and forth, which I often find distracting but works here. One moment you're in the 1900s, next you're in 2014, then the 18th century, and so on, but it’s not done in a way that gives you whiplash and a bad case of “what’s the point of all this?” The storytelling is excellent. There are a number of characters to focus on, namely Marian, who became enthralled with flying since a very young age; Jamie, Marian’s twin brother and lifeline; and Hadley, an actress who “became” Marian a century later.

The story builds up into a crescendo with orchestra-like precision. We ache as the twins find out their father never cared about them; we hiss at the leering Barclay, Marian’s entitled gangster husband, whose goal in life is to control everything Marian does; we lust for Caleb and his emotional detachment; and we question Hadley’s suitability in her role as Marian, if her own loss at a young age should warrant such a possibility.

In its essence, the book is about being free to be who you want to be; not necessarily freedom per se, but the realisation that other people’s hope for you will always imprison you, and that all you have to do is not give in to them and just BE.