Serabelle by Tavi Taylor Black, a review

By Eliot, on May 22nd, 2024

Welcome to another stopover on the TLC book tour. Today’s post is brought to you by Serabelle by Tavi Taylor Black. I received a free copy from the author for an honest review. All rants and opinions are my own.

About the book:

Serabelle: Where the Wealthy Come to Play

• Publisher: Black Rose Writing (April 25, 2024)
• Paperback: 282 pages

An island sheltered from modern progress. Strict lines between servants and masters. Will crossing them leave her fatally exposed?

Bar Harbor, Maine. 1913. Mabel Rae is smart, reckless, and naïve. So when the ambitious seventeen-year-old joins the staff at a rocky cliffside cottage, she willingly lets the boisterous estate owner’s improper advances sweep her off her feet. And the slender young woman dismisses the vulnerability of her position when she discovers she’s pregnant with his unacknowledged child.

Brought harshly down to earth after she’s caught up in the machinations of a family feud, Mabel decides it’s time to take matters into her own hands. But with no money and few rights, she fears a forced marriage to the brutish gardener is her only socially acceptable option.

Is her future forever stunted, or can she become a beacon of change?

In a classic upstairs-downstairs tale, award-winning author Tavi Taylor Black spins an intricate web of idealism’s battle against harsh reality. Set at a time when suffrage was at its height, temperance was gaining momentum, and war loomed in Europe, this spellbinding novel shines a light on inequities we still face today.

Serabelle is a darkly humorous work of historical fiction. If you like intricate relationships, lyrical prose, and stories that tackle serious issues, then you’ll love Tavi Taylor Black’s vivid portrait of the Gilded Age.

What I thought…

I like the premise but I have to say that I was a bit annoyed with Mabel. I really felt like she should have known better and was not an innocent ingenue. I didn’t love the novel but it was a nice diversion. For some reason, the title set me off a bit, too. Serabelle: Where the Wealthy Come to Play sounds like non-fiction, a history about a place.

The blurb states that the book is “darkly humorous” but I must have missed that. As I looked back over the food mentioned in the book, though, perhaps that’s where the sardonic humor was—rich guests shoveling caviar down their gullets. And perhaps the depictions of Allistair Hunt, the rich master of Serabelle who fancies himself a lover and a great tenor was a bit giggle-worthy, too. Maybe there was some dark humor here after all.

And, on second thought, the author does make her characters come to life AND as Mabel annoyed me at the beginning, I did feel for her as her potential upward movements were dashed. (Really not a spoiler.)

If you like historical fiction, I would give this a try.

The Food:

There was a lot of food (and drink) mentioned in the book and Taylor Black uses the types of food well to draw emphasis to the division of classes. Here’s a bit of what I spotted on the higher end.

Manhattans and Extra Dry Martinis
Pate
Sausages and cheeses, relishes
Caviar
Anchovies, pastries, chocolate
Quail stuffed with dates, and rice
Chestnut soup
Spanish wine
French champagne
Raspberry sherbet with chocolate syrup

I wanted to do a raspberry champagne sherbet with a Merlot-chocolate syrup but that will have to wait for another day. We had too many cross-country graduations to attend this past weekend. (I do hope an inspired-by post will pop up soon here though.)