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mindfullibrarian's review against another edition
5.0
Alyssa Cole can do no wrong. I have loved everything she has written, from present-day NYC to Civil War romantic suspense, to this beauty of a novella set in 1917 Harlem. This story is fiercely feminist with an interracial romance, and addresses so many historical touchstones. From the suffragette movement to playing the numbers to the Great Migration and much more, this novella was a great one to listen to during my month-long read of [b:The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration|8171378|The Warmth of Other Suns The Epic Story of America's Great Migration|Isabel Wilkerson|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1433354252s/8171378.jpg|13341052]. It also touches on immigration from India and the discrimination that Indian immigrants faced during that time period.
If you are someone who doesn't typically read romance but want to give Alyssa Cole a try, THIS is the novella to start with. I actually listened to it on audio and it was fabulous. The narration is a bit slow, so I sped it up to 1.5x and it was perfection.
I can't wait to read / listen to the rest of the historical romance novellas by Cole - they are all now available on Audible as part of the Romance package - YAY!
If you are someone who doesn't typically read romance but want to give Alyssa Cole a try, THIS is the novella to start with. I actually listened to it on audio and it was fabulous. The narration is a bit slow, so I sped it up to 1.5x and it was perfection.
I can't wait to read / listen to the rest of the historical romance novellas by Cole - they are all now available on Audible as part of the Romance package - YAY!
ladysadiereads's review
4.0
Bertha is her own woman, with her own club and her own cause. She doesn't need a dishwasher to muck up everything she has worked so hard for. Amir is just trying to make enough to live on - save up and maybe go home. He doesn't count on dance lessons with his beautiful boss changing what he wants.
GUYS - WHY DOES ALYSSA COLE HAVE THE BEST NOVELLAS?! Seriously. The only reason is this isn't five stars is honestly I wanted more! Bertha is strong and beautiful and honest and smart and so deserves to be loved. Amir is shy and cooks awesome food to prove his affection (weirdly one of my things) and dances in apartments. And I love them both. Not to mention the awesome backdrop of NYC in 1917, illegal immigration, racial tensions, vice squads, suffragettes, a wickedly cool club and some side characters that I could honestly read entire novels about.
GUYS - WHY DOES ALYSSA COLE HAVE THE BEST NOVELLAS?! Seriously. The only reason is this isn't five stars is honestly I wanted more! Bertha is strong and beautiful and honest and smart and so deserves to be loved. Amir is shy and cooks awesome food to prove his affection (weirdly one of my things) and dances in apartments. And I love them both. Not to mention the awesome backdrop of NYC in 1917, illegal immigration, racial tensions, vice squads, suffragettes, a wickedly cool club and some side characters that I could honestly read entire novels about.
_rhea's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
informative
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
m_l_valentine's review against another edition
hopeful
informative
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.75
kblincoln's review against another edition
4.0
I am already an Alyssa Cole fan (Thriller When No One is Watching, Contemporary romance like A Duke By Default, post-apocalyptic romance like Radio Silence, and her USA historical romance like An Extraordinary Union)
After the end of NYC’s gilded age, women were organizing for the vote, lascars were coming by ship to be used as cheap labor, and white and folks of color were strictly segregated, especially in the jazzy nightclubs.
Bertha Hines survived on the streets pretty much the only way women of color could at that time, but she found a club-owning husband who ended up dying and now she’s in charge of the club.
But she isn’t safe– not from her patrons, not from the police, not from vice squads who wouldn’t approve of her girls taking clients to the club’s backrooms or if they happened to find a non-negro patron. She needs power. And as a woman, she is powerless as a non-voter against slimy local politicians.
So she joins the suffragettes, and educates her girls about the importance of the vote.
And she still has her club to run. Replacing a dishwasher and worrying about her pregnant chef, she agrees to hire a recent newcomer, Amir Chowdury, whose pride at first sets them at odds, but when he offers to help polish Bertha’s dance routine from his memory of childhood traditional dance training, a tentative partnership is born.
I always learn things reading Cole’s historical romances, and here I learned about the different social strata of the suffragette movement, lascars in NYC, and the segregated clubs. The romance started lovely, but the book is too short for me. Alot of Amir/Bertha’s dancing practice is summarized, and I felt the opportunity to have Amir/Bertha work together somehow on the voting thing or the corrupt cop thing would have also strengthened the romance plot line a bit more.
So not as satisfying as usual, but still lovely.
After the end of NYC’s gilded age, women were organizing for the vote, lascars were coming by ship to be used as cheap labor, and white and folks of color were strictly segregated, especially in the jazzy nightclubs.
Bertha Hines survived on the streets pretty much the only way women of color could at that time, but she found a club-owning husband who ended up dying and now she’s in charge of the club.
But she isn’t safe– not from her patrons, not from the police, not from vice squads who wouldn’t approve of her girls taking clients to the club’s backrooms or if they happened to find a non-negro patron. She needs power. And as a woman, she is powerless as a non-voter against slimy local politicians.
So she joins the suffragettes, and educates her girls about the importance of the vote.
And she still has her club to run. Replacing a dishwasher and worrying about her pregnant chef, she agrees to hire a recent newcomer, Amir Chowdury, whose pride at first sets them at odds, but when he offers to help polish Bertha’s dance routine from his memory of childhood traditional dance training, a tentative partnership is born.
I always learn things reading Cole’s historical romances, and here I learned about the different social strata of the suffragette movement, lascars in NYC, and the segregated clubs. The romance started lovely, but the book is too short for me. Alot of Amir/Bertha’s dancing practice is summarized, and I felt the opportunity to have Amir/Bertha work together somehow on the voting thing or the corrupt cop thing would have also strengthened the romance plot line a bit more.
So not as satisfying as usual, but still lovely.
skywalkerem's review against another edition
5.0
The more I read by Alyssa Cole, the more I love her writing. Romance isn’t usually really my thing, but her writing just sparkles and draws you in.
sandlynn's review against another edition
4.0
Alyssa Cole’s Let Us Dream is a novella published in 2017. The story is set in 1917’s Harlem — 100 years earlier, when women were lobbying for the suffrage in New York state.
Our hero, Amir Khan, is a young man from Bengal, India who has left his land behind to sail the seas and see the world before, possibly, returning to farm his land. It’s a tough life on the ship, but he has found a place, acting as chef. Although he’s been to New York City on previous trips, he suddenly decides to jump ship and seek his fortune in America. Of course, this makes him an illegal immigrant and in constant danger of being deported. Our heroine is Bertha Hines a young woman with a colorful past. Originally from the American South, her father and she traveled the country, performing. Notably, they pretended to be South Asian as that made it easier for them to be accepted by whites than if they revealed themselves to be African Americans. Bertha’s father dies and she eventually hooks up with a man in New York who acts as her pimp before marrying her. Bertha’s husband owned a club in Harlem. Bertha performed there, helped run it, and contributed to its success. When her husband dies, Bertha ensures that she inherits the club, becomes the sole owner and a noted local businesswoman. But, of course, she still faces discrimination as a person of color and a woman. She also must skirt the law since her club allows prostitution on the premises. When the story opens, Bertha is preparing to gather with other women who are fighting for the vote. But many of the “morally upright” women don’t want her help, so she ends up working with her female employees to educate them about the law and encourage them to work for the vote.
Amir enters Bertha’s life when she needs a dishwasher for her club. Despite the fact that Amir’s an excellent cook, especially of Indian cuisine, he decides to take the the lower level job, both because he needs it *and* he finds Bertha fascinating. The rest of this novella follows Amir and Bertha’s attraction to each other, as well as the struggles they face as POC in the U.S. at this time, along with Bertha’s status as a woman.
Alyssa Cole does a wonderful job of bringing this time and setting alive, and making us care about these characters in just 179 pages. I’ve been reluctant to read novellas in the past *because* they tend to do short shrift to a story and make it difficult for a reader to care about the characters. That does not happen here. However, on the downside, Ms. Cole brings such richness that I wanted to learn more about some of the side characters and see more interaction between Amir and Bertha. For instance there is one character who threatens Bertha, and yet he backs off rather too easily towards the end. We don’t see much of another important businesswoman — Mrs. Q — although she plays a key role. And, we don’t see Bertha’s first opportunity to vote — which would’ve been nice, let alone how they dealt with Amir’s immigration status. At that time, would he be considered legal just by marriage to Bertha? Anyway, the fact that I enjoyed the novella but still had questions makes me wish it had been a bit longer. I’d give the story a strong B+.
Our hero, Amir Khan, is a young man from Bengal, India who has left his land behind to sail the seas and see the world before, possibly, returning to farm his land. It’s a tough life on the ship, but he has found a place, acting as chef. Although he’s been to New York City on previous trips, he suddenly decides to jump ship and seek his fortune in America. Of course, this makes him an illegal immigrant and in constant danger of being deported. Our heroine is Bertha Hines a young woman with a colorful past. Originally from the American South, her father and she traveled the country, performing. Notably, they pretended to be South Asian as that made it easier for them to be accepted by whites than if they revealed themselves to be African Americans. Bertha’s father dies and she eventually hooks up with a man in New York who acts as her pimp before marrying her. Bertha’s husband owned a club in Harlem. Bertha performed there, helped run it, and contributed to its success. When her husband dies, Bertha ensures that she inherits the club, becomes the sole owner and a noted local businesswoman. But, of course, she still faces discrimination as a person of color and a woman. She also must skirt the law since her club allows prostitution on the premises. When the story opens, Bertha is preparing to gather with other women who are fighting for the vote. But many of the “morally upright” women don’t want her help, so she ends up working with her female employees to educate them about the law and encourage them to work for the vote.
Amir enters Bertha’s life when she needs a dishwasher for her club. Despite the fact that Amir’s an excellent cook, especially of Indian cuisine, he decides to take the the lower level job, both because he needs it *and* he finds Bertha fascinating. The rest of this novella follows Amir and Bertha’s attraction to each other, as well as the struggles they face as POC in the U.S. at this time, along with Bertha’s status as a woman.
Alyssa Cole does a wonderful job of bringing this time and setting alive, and making us care about these characters in just 179 pages. I’ve been reluctant to read novellas in the past *because* they tend to do short shrift to a story and make it difficult for a reader to care about the characters. That does not happen here. However, on the downside, Ms. Cole brings such richness that I wanted to learn more about some of the side characters and see more interaction between Amir and Bertha. For instance there is one character who threatens Bertha, and yet he backs off rather too easily towards the end. We don’t see much of another important businesswoman — Mrs. Q — although she plays a key role. And, we don’t see Bertha’s first opportunity to vote — which would’ve been nice, let alone how they dealt with Amir’s immigration status. At that time, would he be considered legal just by marriage to Bertha? Anyway, the fact that I enjoyed the novella but still had questions makes me wish it had been a bit longer. I’d give the story a strong B+.