I requested this on the basis of how much I enjoyed "Z" but I don't feel this book is in the same league. Most likely, it was me not wanting to read about the "trials and tribulations" of wealthy people who aspire to become even wealthier.

I'm not fond of the rather stilted writing style the author uses here - it seems inconsistent and affected, especially her habit of starting sentences with 'too' and a few jarring moments that are almost 4th wall breaks. The subject matter is interesting but this fictionalisation of it doesn't quite do it justice. I would rather read a straight biography of Alva Vanderbilt as this novel brings little to the table. The plot is so mundane - making good marriages, social climbing, a lukewarm romance - that Alva as an historical figure is reduced to less than the sum of her parts. In fact, the book ends just as her life starts to get really interesting and doesn't cover her philanthropic endeavours and her campaigns for women's rights.

Read as a fictional romance, this book is very run-of-the-mill. If you want to learn about the real Alva Vanderbilt, it's only fairly interesting.

I think that the students in our school library need to hear lots of diverse voices and read stories and lives of many different kinds of people and experiences. When I inherited the library it was an incredibly sanitised space with only 'school readers' and project books on 'the railways' etc. Buying in books that will appeal to the whole range of our readers with diverse voices, eclectic and fascinating subject matter, and topics that will intrigue and fascinate them was incredibly important to me.
This is a book that I think our senior readers will enjoy very much indeed - not just because it's well written with an arresting voice that will really keep them reading and about a fascinating topic - but it's also a book that doesn't feel worthy or improving, it doesn't scream 'school library and treats them like young reading adults who have the right to explore a range of modern diverse reads that will grip and intrigue them and ensure that reading isn't something that they are just forced to do for their English project - this was a solid ten out of ten for me and I'm hoping that our students are as gripped and caught up in it as I was. It was one that I stayed up far too late reading and one that I'll be recommending to the staff as well as our senior students - thank you so much for the chance to read and review; I really loved it and can't wait to discuss it wth some of our seniors once they've read it too!

This is a book based on the real life of Alva Vanderbilt, an American socialite and campaigner for women's suffrage.

I found it interesting - it brought to life the fashions and behaviours of wealthy American society in the late 1800s. I couldn't imagine having so much money - but equally did not feel at all envious, as Alva's life was not without difficulties.

Alva herself was an interesting character, intelligent and capable, and daring to challenge the status quo at a time when women did not really have a voice in society, and were expected to behave in a particular way.

Recommended for lovers of the history, fashion and society of the 19th century.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for an ARC. All opinions my own.

This is hard to review. While I enjoyed the book I'm not sure the author has fulfilled her own objective. The Alva Vanderbilt portrayed in the novel does not show a woman motivated by anything other than wealth and social prominence.

There's lots of lovely description, particularly of the architecture and parties. The abundant luxury of the Vanderbilt family is apparent and atmospheric.

Alva herself and her relationships come across as quite flat. She is just not an appealing character and the interesting things she does are diminished by her lack of likeability.
Despite this, I think I would like to read more about her life.

Thank you Netgalley for the digital copy in return for an honest review

An interesting insight into an extraordinary woman, and the high society New York of the so called “Gilded Age”. Alva, genteel but impoverished manoeuvres her way into a marriage with super rich William Vanderbilt and this book is a fictional document of Alva’s experience in that marriage and beyond. We see Alva as unusually forward thinking, yet constrained by the social mores of the time. Of course, she is cushioned from any backlash to her progressive views and behaviour by her huge wealth. Therese Anne Fowler has created a detailed, descriptive work focusing on a rarefied , privileged world.

Fascinating and interesting. This story has obviously been well researched. This was an interesting read but it did not hold my interest the whole way through. I felt that I could not relate to the people in the book. They lived in a totally different world. I had heard of the Vanderbilts but I had not heard of Alva. She is definitely inspirational.

Thank you to Netgalley for my copy.

I did not really enjoy this book unfortunately. It is just not to my personal taste, I found that I had little interest in the lives of the people involved, whose lavish lifestyle I could not relate to. There was not enough depth to the story to keep my interest alive, and I skipped through it to get to the end. I wish I could have liked it more.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for my advance copy.

What an inspirational and fascinating woman. I really enjoyed this book which gave me a good insight into this for some privileged and gilded era.

An amazing story. I requested this because I loved the novel Z, by the same author and have read it many times. This book doesn't disappoint. I'd love to read more of these by this author, they'd definitely be auto-buys for me.

Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for the chance to read and review this piece.

While I've spent time in New York and love the turn of the last century I knew very little about Alva Smith Vanderbilt a woman who changed one family's reputation and shook up a social class. And this book is a fantastic way to learn her story with a little fiction and drama thrown in.
I didn't know what to expect when I started this book, would it be all history filled with dates, dinner menus and dresses? Or would it be purely fantasy? However the author managed to give a mix of both with letters between friends and newspaper excerpts. The way the book was written made it an enjoyable learning lesson.
The characters were as fantastic as they were vulgar, annoying and shallow. How Alva put up with them for so long was baffling. And the life she had was drab and shallow that I was itching for her to shake it off. How she escaped that life and what she did was a great tale.
The back ground gave me a better understanding of the era I already liked filled with names i recognized, but events I didn't know. It is a great story for those who know a little or a lot.
Grab this book for a weekend read with a few glasses of fine wine, tissues and a comfortable chaise langue, or chair.

I absolutely adored this book & loved learning about a family that I had genuinely never heard of. I loved Therese’s writing & how well she seems to have sewn fact & fiction together, & I’m desperate to learn more about Alva & her daughter. This is a great book for feminist historical fiction fans, especially those who love fiction based on fact.

⚠️ This book contains racism, sexism, Native-American slurs, some vague consensual yet uncomfortable scenes of a sexual nature, as well as very detailed scenes ⚠️

Well Alva Vanderbilt was a determined woman! This is a novel of the Gilded Age , an era I knew little about before I read this. This is a story of excess and ambition. I am inspired to spend more time reading books and novels about this period of American history. Thanks to Netgalley for giving me a chance to read an arc of this book.

A Well-Behaved Woman is a fictionalised version of the events of Alva Vanderbilt's life, from her humble beginnings, her marriage to William Vanderbilt, to her support of Suffragettes.



It was amazing how many houses I wanted to look at when reading this, as Therese Anne Fowler describes the buildings so well, and I kept wanting to see what they looked like today! Sadly, the ones in New York don't survive, but still lovely to look at online!


I did also look up characters on Wikipedia, and was interested in how Alva's daughter Consuelo wrote about her mother in her autobiography, The Glitter and the Gold, and yes, I want to read that now!



All in all, this was a really enjoyable read, and made me interested in American history!



This was written by the same person who wrote Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald, which Amazon then made into a series called Z: The Beginning of Everything, starring Christina Ricci, and having read A Well-Behaved Woman, I now want to read Z!


A Well-Behaved Woman was published on 24th January this year, and is available on Amazon, and everywhere else you can find books!



I was given this book for free in return for an unbiased review, so my thanks to NetGalley and to John Murray Press (the publishers) for this book.



Check out my GoodReads profile to see more reviews!

I'd never encountered Alva Vanderbilt until I read this book and I'm so glad I have. She was an amazing woman who achieved so much, even more so as a woman of the Gilded Age. The depth of historical research in this fictional biography is obvious throughout the book and the author transports you into the glamorous, fickle world of American high society during this time with the greatest of ease. I loved this book and have been recommending it to everyone, not to be missed.

I really wanted to like this, but I was mostly just bored and exasperated. I usually love fictionalised versions of real people’s lives/ stories (one of my favourite books is Laurie Graham’s Gone With The Windsor’s- about Wallis Simpson) but this just didn’t have the spark for me. Maybe I need more humour, or maybe I just didn’t care about the characters enough. Hey ho.

It’s hard not to be drawn to a title like this. Everything it suggests to the imagination is explored as we follow the life of Alva Smith who became Mrs William K. Vanderbilt and later Mrs Oliver Belmont.

Society and its views on behaviour are put under the microscope. Sometimes stepping outside of the generally accepted rules of conduct, is the best course of action even if it goes against what most consider well-behaved.

I thoroughly enjoyed seeing Alva manoeuvre her way from a respected family fallen into poverty, to acquiring money through marriage and then to conquering high society. I enjoyed seeing how Fowler imagined she had learned her emancipatory views on equality of the sexes and races.

The novel refers to popular novelists of the times and there is a sense in which the sensibilities of Henry James, Edith Wharton and others ripple through the novel, creating a kind of sentimental outlook generally at odds with Alva’s character, but enticing nonetheless. Fowler doesn’t allow her to escape romance, though society would certainly have restricted her access to it. Romance, as understood by Alva, is a luxury that rarely has positive outcomes.

There are moral complexities at the heart of the Alva’s tale too. Though what an individual might want to do is pitted against what constraints they are forced to work within, there are times when Alva could have behaved differently, when money is recognised as a safety net cushioning its owners and she yet chooses not to intervene in the difficulties played out around her but to comfortably sit them out. Many of her opportunities are shown to come not just from her sharp mind, but from luck and the further the story develops the clearer we see the beginnings of our celebrity culture developing; a culture in which the behaviour of the rich becomes entertainment and social mobility no longer relies on birthright but on finance. Sadly the people with money, as Alva’s story shows, don’t always behave well, so what might appear to be a positive shift away from tradition is in fact a copy of it. Alva understands she could have remained poor, could have struggled to make her way in life. The distance between those who have and those who have not isn’t shortened, it is just a different group of people who have more.

Alva’s personality is what drives the novel. She is a woman who takes decisions and acts upon them. She is a fascinating subject. As befitting the current trend, she could easily be described as cold-hearted, manipulative and selfish. She could easily be disliked simply because her ability to reason goes beyond the boundaries of what usually encloses the definition of womanhood. In that sense this novel fits the many novels seemingly inspired by #metoo that highlight women who don’t fit the sentimental mould, but who step into the limelight in all their stereotype-defying glory.

A Well-Behaved Woman is exactly what it says on the tin. It is a novel of the Vanderbilts. It is a society novel that has its cake and eats it. We get ultimate access into an exclusive lifestyle and then get to criticise it. It’s the equivalent of reality television for the nineteenth century as it moves into the twentieth. Make of that what you will.

A fascinating, well written, and engaging book.
It mixes historical facts and fiction in an amazing way, never boring and never making the characters appear too modern.
I like to read about this era, the suffragette and this was a wonderful read.
I look forward to reading other books by this author.
Highly recommended!
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC

I found this difficult to read but made myself continue. It is a time in history about which I confess I know very little. For someone who is interested in this era it would probably be a good read.

Absorbing historical novel about an early suffragette in London - having plotted on the very last evenings of losing all family finance to win the hand of a rich man - in her case, a Vanderbilt- the costs of allowing herself to 'go for the money' come home over the years (and we track this) - but she puts the energy to positive use. The story is not only of her coming into understanding of how she wants to live, but also about a great friendship with a woman in her life, and with her daughter. She embarks on personal choices that include scandalous liaisons - but she does not see them so: divorce and remarriage in a new century. Thoroughly enjoyable and while it skirts on the edge of anachronism in language and at times, sensibility, it is deftly managed and moves along swiftly - it works as a discussion of novel-long themes of feminism. Really enjoyable ...