Did not finish and stopped at 33 percent. nothing wrong with the book, I just put it down and never picked it up.

Laurie Lico Albanese is a new to me author but one that is a master writer that shines through every page of Hester. Not at all what I expected but oh so good so very good. Though it is based on a real historical writer and a real book he wrote, this is a book of fiction that is entirely believable. Unique and original I was taken hook, line, and sinker from beginning to end, especially the end. The best book I have read this year.

Oh, if only to hear in color!

An ARC of the book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley which I voluntarily chose to read and reviewed. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This started off really well but then just draggggged.

"Hester" tells the story of Isobel Gambel, the <b>fictional</b> inspiration for Hester Prynne, from Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter." Hawthorne is one of my favorite authors, though I'm a bigger fan of his short stories and haven't read TSL in years. That said, it doesn't matter if you're super familiar with the source material because this has barely anything to do with it.

Isobel, a poor girl from Scotland, has synesthesia, a condition where she experiences letters and sounds as colors. Unfortunately, no one in the 1800s knew what that was, so she just learns to keep it a secret. Her foremothers who also have the condition were regularly accused of witchcraft, all the way back to the famous Scottish witch Isobel Gowdie. Why Albanese decided to link Gowdie to Hawthorne's work IDK but, whatever. Isobel moves to America with her husband, who is a wang and away at sea anyway, so she starts an affair with Hawthorne. Positioning her in the role of Hester and Hawthorne in the role of Dimmsdale if you ignore all the themes of TSL and focus on just the adultery aspect.

I know I'm being salty but this would have actually been okay if the novel didn't pull a total bait-and-switch once Isobel lands in America. Instead of having anything to do with Hawthorne or the Puritanism which inspired his most iconic work, Hester becomes a slow moving commentary about the social environment of Salem, MA in the mid-1800s. Which I guess could be cool if anything had really happened or if the prose hadn't been strongly purple-adjacent. Realistically, this book could've been at least 50 pages shorter without really sacrificing anything.

Also, why did she randomly change the spelling of Hawthorne's last name?

TL;DR - It wasn't the worse but I got super bored.

To fans of feminist stories, witchy tales of realistic romance, and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, this is the novel for you! As the eponymous name implies, Hester is about the woman behind Hawthorne’s famous heroine. Albanese begins with the premise that she was a real woman, that the Hester Prynne of Hawthorne’s fame was based on a person from his own past, fantasized into the character of The Scarlet Letter.

In this backstory, Hester Prynne is a young Scottish woman, Isobel Gamble, who arrives in the New World for the express purpose of leaving behind the old one. It is an adventure tale, interspersed with romance, lust, avarice, and desire for belonging. The novel follows Isobel through her first few years in the northern colony, around a hundred years after the terrible witch trials at Salem, in the early 1800s.

But the magnetic charm of Hester doesn’t hinge on this legendary and vile history, even though the witch trials still bestow both a lurid glamour and an ugly stain on those whose ancestors took part in it. The community as a whole has a long memory and a store of dark secrets: the witch trials and the African slave trade (though illegal, the formerly enslaved and the enslaved still feel the manacles of bondage in all kinds of social, cultural, and institutionalized ways).

Simultaneously, the novel does not stand on the appeal of the fictionalized Hester or the “real” Isobel, though the characters in Hester are well-crafted as complex, nuanced individuals filled with flaws and virtues. No, the real pull of this story is its vivid portrayal of Puritan life as a gendered, stratified, prestige-hungry society. Hester spreads out for the reader a vast and complicated landscape of social politics. The world Albanese crafts is a real one. The reader gets a look into the world of Puritan men and women that lies beyond the stereotypical discussions of marriage and sexlessness and religion; Albanese’s Isobel is a working woman — a seamstress — and we see through the eye of her needle into the labor women do, both socially as the pillars around which society is upheld and economically as employers, employees, merchants, and consumers. We also see the emotional labor women are tasked with, according to society and their men — husbands, brothers, fathers, and so on.

The women of Hester are not powerless as a result of their labor. They do, in fact, wield immense influence and can — in some circumstances — exercise a great deal of agency. They work within the patriarchal framework of Puritan society to defy it, uphold it, mold it to their needs and ambitions. Isobel Gamble is only one of the women in Hester around whom the novel revolves. There is also Isobel Gowdie who is Isobel Gamble’s ancestress; Mercy, a woman of African descent, formerly enslaved; Felicity, a shrewd merchant in Salem; Nell, a fellow immigrant; and the Silas women, members of Salem’s old guard elite. Hester is about all these women and the world they lived in and shaped like clay through their ambitions and circumstances.

The story takes all the way to Pearl, the narrator in Hawthorne’s novel, but it is not the Pearl that he created for us; she is Isobel’s Pearl. Any fan of The Scarlet Letter will find continuity and novelty in Hester.

This is a gorgeous novel; its prose is simple, succinct, and sharp, much like the crisp starkness of Puritan collars and its story is ornate, a twist of knots and tiny stitches like the floral embroidery of Salem’s women.

*This book was received as an Advanced Reviewer's Copy from NetGalley.

Hester is a potential answer to the question "what inspired this?" At least when it comes to Nathaniel Hawthorne's 'Scarlet Letter'. Centering on Isobel, a young married woman from Scotland who makes her way to the New World, it tells of people still beset by notions of witchcraft, strict hierarchal roles that govern women and other minority groups, and of a man who was trying to write, but maybe couldn't face his own failings even as he looked to his past.

By no means do I believe this to be a true account of what happened (neither should you, that's why this is marked as fiction). However, I do think it's an interesting premise into the 'what ifs' that surrounded the Scarlet Letter's origins. Moreso though, the story is of a young woman trying to survive in the circumstances she's given. Add in a little bit of 'magic' by way of her Synesthesia (although admittedly I think the book would have carried even without that extra feature, she could have just been a woman that took joy in using colors for her art).

Honestly, my only real complaint is the character interaction. Sometimes it just felt forced or too convenient for where the plotline needed to go. And the poor Captain, he really did deserve better. Character complaints aside though, I enjoyed the premise of the book and thought it was an interesting perspective on inspiration.

Review by M. Reynard 2022

This was a decent read, albeit slow for the first 50-60%. It was hard to determine if it was trying to be fantasy with the embroidery or not. I feel that I would’ve appreciated it more had i read The Scarlet Letter beforehand.

What a wonderful reimaging of the book, The Scarlet Letter. Isobel has always seen things and sounds in color. She is successful in keeping this part of her hidden, so she isn't viewed as a witch. She eventually marries Edward Gamble but soon learns her husband is an addict who loses all his money on the drugs he uses on himself, rather than for his apothecary. They board a ship to Massachusetts with a kind captain who eventually gives Edward passage on another voyage to earn money. Isobel finds herself all alone in a new world. She is a talented seamstress who begins to support herself. She begins a love affair with Nathanial Hawthorne and longs for a life with him. When her husband does not return, Isobel begins to hope for a life with Nathanial. But when the unthinkable happens, she finds herself scorned and in despair. There is a lot more going on in this story that emerges as you continue reading. I really liked every bit of this intriguing story. I received a complimentary eBook from Netgalley.com

so excessively written with so much purple prose i almost stopped reading
the disjointed 'past' narratives at the end of chapters also threw me off and stopped the flow of the main story
i also found that it didn't add to the book's plot/strength as well
and the PACING god it moved so slowly and it felt like almost nothing had major consequences

I so enjoyed this prequel to the fictional Hester Prynne of the Scarlet Letter. The main character, Isobel, is a woman ahead of her time – determined to follow her desire for love, her passion for embroidery and her hope for the future.

If you are interested in the historic Salem witch trials in this country – and those persecuted in Europe – you will find this a fascinating read.

Isobel is told by many to “trust the needle,” a powerful metaphor strung throughout the book. To me, it signified trusting one’s creativity. But it also served as a metaphor for female empowerment – to trust one’s passion, one’s instinct, and one’s female strength. Isobel is a woman with grapheme-color synesthesia, which aids in her creative skills, but also puts her at risk during a time when fear of black magick abounded, and any perceived ‘differentness’ could be dangerous for a woman.

I enjoyed the two time periods presented – Isobel’s during 1829, and her grandmother’s during 1662 – and the parallels between both women’s stories of persecution. Even Nathaniel Hawthorne’s story and Isobel’s are intertwined through the historic lens of “accuser and accused.” Fable and story are impressively infused in this work as well.

The language is lovely but accessible, and I look forward to more books by this author. A few samples:
<i> Even Forbes’s wife is screaming, the bright words leaving her black maw of a mouth: “A witch, she’s a witch!”

… the three ships in the harbor huddle together like dark birds sleeping in the tides.

And yet silence doesn’t protect us from the past, as I well know. When a legacy haunts a family the echoes reverberate even if on one hears them.” </i>

You’ll enjoy an excellent author’s note at the end about the research involved and the spark of an idea that led to this book.
4.5 out of 5, rounded up.

Hester is perfect for fans of historical fiction! I really enjoyed this period drama that spans from the 1600’s to the 1800’s. It takes place in Salem and touches on the infamous witchcraft trials and the American slave trade. It’s about Isobel, the woman who inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne’s scarlet letter. I found it very interesting to learn about the unusual phenomenon known as synesthesia which enables you to see colours when hearing or touching something. A condition that some famous artists claim to have today.

Isobel, a seamstress, and her husband Edward, an apothecary, set sail for Salem after he has burned all of his bridges due to his opium addiction. Edward abandons her for a job on a ship serving as a medic. While he is away, Isobel is alone and must make her living using her talent for embroidery. Isobel meets the mysterious Nathaniel Hawthorne. Their connection is instant and undeniable. They both harbour dangerous secrets. Secrets that have consequences.

“Hester is a timeless tale of art, ambition and desire that examines the roots of female creative power and the men that try to shut it down.”

Hester releases on October 4th, 2022.

Well done @lauriealbanese 👏🏻

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and @netgalley for this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

#bookadoration #hester #laurielicoalbanese #bookstagram #canadianbookstagram #smpinfluencers #stmartinspress

I absolutely loved this novel! It is rich with masterful prose, colorful, and artful descriptions that paint the most beautiful scenes and ideas. Hester invites a raw,human perspective to the Salem Witch Trials, life in Salem for European immigrants as well as Freed Slaves and Free Blacks during this era. Another focus is women's strength, resourcefulness, and ability to lift one another up when facing tribulations. This novel is a fictional backstory to Nathaniel Hawthorne's inspiration for his book, The Scarlet Letter. Well done! I was engrossed from beginning to end!!

Spellbinding! This imagining of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s inspiration for The Scarlet Letter is as richly colorful, enchanting and complex as the embroidery and other needlework creations by protagonist Isobel, who sees colors associated with letters and for whom sounds evoke colors, shapes and textures. Set primarily in Scotland and in Salem, Massachusetts in the early 1800s, with vignettes from earlier days in both locales, this is an utterly fascinating, enthralling and propulsive tale of creativity, strength and survival. Among its many themes are the ties that bind in a myriad of contexts - marriage, family, slavery, social class and even employment. Expertly woven into the story as well is the concept of intergenerational trauma - passing down of trauma experienced by one person to that person’s descendants. Hawthorne fans may not appreciate how he is portrayed, and the story might have been enriched by revealing a bit more about him and of his eventual wife, the venerable painter and illustrator Sophia Peabody Hawthorne. (Anyone wanting to know more about Sophia might enjoy The Peabody Sisters, a Pulitzer Prize finalist by Megan Marshall.). But this story stands on its own as superbly rendered historical fiction. Many thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for a complimentary ARC. Opinions are my own.

This novel was very different than what I expected, it was almost a therapeutic redemption for my experience reading The Scarlet Letter in high school. The story of Isobel's journey that leads her to Salem, MA and crosses her path with Nathaniel Hawthorne mixed with a flow of magic not only provides enlightenment to the story of Hester Prynne but stands on its own strength. If you haven't read The Scarlet Letter then this novel is a story that will be worthy on its own merit, and if you have read it (perhaps as an assignment) you will likely look at it in a new light. A novel which has magic, the magic of language and secrets and love, but ultimately finds its strengths in humanity and love and friendship that find us and see us for who we are.

Thank you NetGalley for an early copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Wow, I LOVED this book, it was absolutely beautiful. Inspired by The Scarlet Letter, Hester basically delves into what would have happened if Nathanial Hawthorne had been Arthur Dimmesdale, told by the perspective of Hester Prynne herself. Isobel (who eventually inspires the character of Hester) is a Scottish needleworker and seamstress who immigrates to Salem, Massachusetts in the early 1800s with her opium-addicted husband. Once they arrive, he leaves her behind to join a sea voyage, and she must navigate life as a newcomer and a woman alone at a time when both are very problematic. She eventually meets "Nat" Hawthorne, and they are intrigued by each other; the romance goes from there to a somewhat predictable conclusion, but with some twists.

in addition to what is essentially a retelling of The Scarlet Letter, the story addresses Salem and Scotland's history of witchcraft trials, slavery and the Underground Railroad, and some pretty intense descriptions of advanced embroidery skills. The author clearly did some serious research for this book, and I loved all of the details and nuance. Having read The Scarlet Letter, I knew where the story was going, but I was still intrigued and surprised at the ending. I'm so pleased to have had the opportunity to read an advance copy of this book!

I received this book as an ARC in exchange for an honest review. My opinions are my own.

Hester has such an interesting premise and an absolutely gorgeous cover that enticed me as soon as I saw it.. It takes the idea that if Nathaniel Hawthorne's other literary works were based on real events, then maybe The Scarlet Letter could be based on a true story also. Isobel Gamble comes from a long line of women with a secret. She flees to the New World with her husband but abruptly finds herself alone and penniless in a strange place. Isobel meets a young Nathaniel Hawthorne and her life is changed forever.

This was my first experience with author Laurie Lico Albanese. I found the writing and imagery quite beautiful (even if there was a lot of purple prose) but the story started to drag in the middle and never really picked up for me. There was a lot of side plots that took away from the flow of the main story. I feel like the time period was 100 years off. The way Isobel described America as the "New World" and her neighbors as "puritan colonists" seemed incorrect for the time period. Isobel's synesthesia was a clever way to make people think she was a witch since it was a condition that was not known at the time but her fear of being found a witch would have been more realistic if the time period was closer to when there would have been an actual fear. Overall, this ended up not being for me but I can see why others would enjoy it.

Thank you to NetGalley and St Martin's Press for this eARC. All opinions expressed are my own.

I love discovering books and authors that nail historical novels by giving an old tale/event a fresh perspective. This is that book! Moody and atmospheric, this alternative view on the story behind the Scarlet Letter will leave any classic book lover or historical fiction fan wanting more! I can’t wait to see what else this author comes up with!

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press. Publication: October 4, 2022.

Once in a while, you find an historical novel that offers just a perfect combination of true historical events, original story, and detailed (even quirky) research. And what a treat it is! HESTER by Laurie Lico Albanese is just such a novel. Awarded five stars on Goodreads.

The “Hester” of the title refers to Hester Prynne, the heroine of Nathanial Hawthorne’s novel of Puritan New England, THE SCARLET LETTER. And as Albanese explains in her own Notes and Acknowledgements, the premise of this book is “What if Hester Prynne told her own story?” Because, after all, isn’t it plausible that Hawthorne drew from his own life experiences in writing a romance about doomed love?

The heroine of THIS book is Isobel, a Scottish immigrant, gifted embroiderer, and descendant of a woman accused of witchcraft. Isobel and her husband wind up, in the late 1820s, in Massachusetts, where they hope to establish a more prosperous life in the New World. That’s where Isobel really puts her formidable skills to the test.

Along the way, there is a sub-plot about enslaved people living in the North and about those trying to capture and return them to their Southern “owners” to collect rewards. I picked up a bit of knowledge about ships and their various uses at this time. And who knew I’d find the details of how women’s clothes were made fascinating? Also, the book touches on synesthesia, which I knew little about.

Isobel’s story is inventive, with lots of unexpected twists and turns. It’s a novel about the nature of love, about learning who is truly trustworthy, and about relying on oneself to find happiness. I think I read this over a period of 36 hours. It’s really just a wonderful and completely captivating read!

Hester is a very clever novel. We follow young Isobel Gamble as she and her husband flee a debtors prison in Scotland for New England. Isobel quickly realizes her apothecary husband’s weakness for self-medicating with alcohol and opium. Not long after landing, he is already wrapped up in another scheme and leaves her alone in a new country without a penny.

Isobel, coming from a long line of strong women, is not afraid of hard work. She uses her skill at needlework to keep herself fed, and dreams of opening her own dress shop. The longer her husband is away the easier it is to imagine a life without him, and this thinking gets her into trouble in the staunchly conservative town of Salem, that hasn’t let go of its Puritan roots. Lest she forget, the “real Americans” who have lived in the country for generations, remind Isobel that she isn’t one of them.

Isobel’s gift with the needle is amplified by her synesthesia, an illness that is still unknown in this time period, but is genetic. Her ability to hear colors makes her embroidery stand out. Mostly this is a good thing that will help her earn money, but remember the community’s memories are long, and the unknown is often blamed on witchcraft.

The similarities between Isobel’s life and Hester Prynne are obvious, but not in a bad way, and Isobel’s path definitely has it’s differences due to the time period. The author takes great care in her interpretation of A Scarlet Letter and Hester is a nice tribute.

Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press, and of course Laurie Lico Albanese for the advanced copy. Hester comes out on October 4th. All opinions are my own.

This retelling of the Scarlet Letter was interesting setting the tone of the country during this time period. Although I am not a fan of reading about witches and the abuse of women, this was an important part of history that needs to be told. I loved seeing Isabel’s character growth as she emerges from being beaten down by many other characters throughout the book. A little slow moving in parts but I am sure this will be a must read for many. #Hester #LaurieLicoAlbanese #NetGalley

The prose is lyrical and beautiful, and the story was enjoyable from beginning to end. I enjoy books that focus heavily on character growth and don't personally mind that at times the plot may have been slow. It was fun to watch Isobel grow and change. At it's heart, this novel is deeply feminist and that's always great to read. As a Massachusetts native, it's also always personally interesting to me to read books that center around our history here.