A perfectly paced historical young adult novel with a dash of intrigue, racial injustice, feminism, family secrets, romance, horse racing and plenty of journalistic sass. Despite the story being perhaps a little too convenient and safe at times I rather enjoyed this and would't hesitate to read another novel by Stacey Lee.

(ARC provided by publisher via NetGalley)

I became quickly absorbed in the life of seventeen-year-old Jo Kuan and her provoking newspaper advice column. The author successfully challenged many social issues such as race, gender, and social class. I'd highly recommend this book to all fans of historical fiction.⁠

5 Words: Survival, family, ambition, truth, lies.

Not without some problems, but an excellent and addictive read. I truly couldn't stop turning the pages, I was so desperate to know what was going to happen next.

Jo is very much a product of her environment. She has a lot of internalised racism and misogyny, and I thought that this was very cleverly explored, especially with themes of feminism and women's rights.

A wonderful read historical fiction at its best characters especially sassy wonderful Jo come alive.I will be recommending this book to my book club .abd to my book loving friends.#netgalley#littlbrownbooksuk

Thanks to Little Brown Book Group UK and NetGalley for the Advance Review Copy in exchange for an honest review.

I really, really wanted to like this one but I just couldn't gel with the main character. Little miss perfect types always grate on me and I found it too saccharine sweet.

This book is perfectly 'nice' but I found it too corny to immerse myself in. It seems pretty much everyone else loved it though so I'm guessing it's just me.

This is the story of Jo Kuan, a Chinese American working by day as a ladies maid to one of the meanest, and wealthiest, girls of downtown Atlanta. However, by night she transforms into ‘Miss Sweetie’, advice column agony aunt - dishing out stages of wisdom to the very women who ignore her.

The heart of this novel really is Jo. She’s a wonderful protagonist, filled with smart, feminist ideas far above her time, yet grounded in the harsh reality of her race and segregation. Abandoned by her parents as a baby, she also struggles with identity and what it is to be caught between two cultures but not quite belonging to either. Her compassion and warmth spilled off the page, and I found myself warming very quickly to her character - making me deeply care about what happened to her, and the various complexities of her life.

The plot itself is also really charming, and sets out to do exactly what I thought it would. It speaks of resilience and strength of character in a time not that far removed from our own, and is written in an utterly believable and down to earth way with elements of romance, sociology and history that I found utterly compelling to read about. If anything, I would have liked more interaction between Jo and her uncle, and further explore their relationship which I found a bit lacking. That said, I found all the characters well developed and fully formed.

There needs to be more historical ya fiction with these types of protagonists, and I really look forward to what the author brings out in the future.

This book the ingredients for a compelling story: historical setting at an interesting time (post-abolition), southern USA, immigrants who were a curiosity/highly unusual, living in the margins of society and forced into employment with limited protections...

Even with echoes of Dear Mrs Bird and the “secret” correspondent who answers letters, this book was interesting but not illuminating. I wanted to love it, truly I did - drawing on books I’d loved such as the Underground Railroad - but it was just a little bit bland for me.

Enjoyable and did get better as the story unfolds but sadly just a little too slow to work for me.

3.5* due to the story elements and teaching me about the mistreatment of Chinese people in the USA and the beginnings of segregation, but didn’t grab me enough.

Jo Kuan has lived with her adopted father, Old Gin, in the basement of a newspaper printer in Atlanta. It is the end of the 19th Century and woman are looking for emancipation and independence. However this only applies to white women. Meanwhile the coloured population of the South is free from slavery but their rights are being eroded. For Jo, the colour of her skin is more complex.
I believe this book is intended for the young adult audience and that will probably explain why I found it a giddy and very lightweight read. However there are really profound issues addressed here. By placing Jo as a woman of Chinese origin, Lee is able to explore another side of prejudice in turn of the century Atlanta. this means that the sense of time and place is spot on and the politics sits alongside a jolly little tale with an engaging heroine.

Set in 1890's Atlanta, Jo Kuan is a 17 Chinese-American girl who lives with Old Gin, who took her in and raised her after her parents abandoned her. By night, they live secretly in the basements beneath newspaper publishers and by day they both work for one of the richest families in Atlanta, Jo as a lady's maid for the daughter of the house and Old Gin in the stables. When she overhears the publishing family saying they're struggling with all their competition in the market, Jo secretly pens an advice column for them to print under the name Miss Sweetie. As she comes up against all sorts of racist and sexist struggles in her personal life, she uses Miss Sweetie to channel her frustrations and shake up what society thinks of women and people of colour. But the overnight success of Miss Sweetie soon becomes a problem for Jo, as people are dying to find out who Miss Sweetie is, for better or for worse. Can she risk being found out?

I loved this book! It's such a smart and funny YA book that can be enjoyed by everyone. Jo is such a dynamic interesting character and I loved seeing her channel Miss Sweetie into her own life and push herself to do more. The secondary characters felt well thought out too. There's so many different plots going on that all feed into each other and never get too complicated or felt like too much. This book highlights feminism but highlights how white it was in 1890s. It's a great book for younger readers to highlight racism and sexism in those times as it's done so well. Despite these heavier themes, everything is nicely balanced by the wit and humour. Refreshing, informative and fun historical YA novel

The characters in the book almost lifted off the pages and they felt so realistic
The writing style of this book is elegant
A great historical novel

The Downstairs Girl, in my opinion, cements Stacey Lee's status at the top of the young-adult historical fiction tree; she can always be relied on to write a truly engrossing, high-quality tale. The year is 1890, and Chinese-American teenager Jo Kuan has just lost her job at a milliner's in Atlanta, Georgia, thereby forcing her to take work as a maid for an affluent family who she has worked for before. Their treatment of her was no less than disgusting, but she has little choice. Infuriated by rampant societal inequality Jo begins to spend her evenings penning a newspaper advice column under the pseudonym Miss Sweetie in order to get her strong opinions into the public domain. But soon readers of her advice become obsessed about finding out who she really is; especially her opponents. As the column becomes more and more popular Jo must decide whether to reveal her identity and suffer the consequences or to stay anonymous for her own safety.

Firstly, I am going to assume that the double-meaning of the title was intentional on Ms Lee's part: it of course refers to the fact she and guardian Old Gin live beneath a print shop but it also could be reference to her working for a wealthy family where those in the house are referred to as upstairs (the wealthy inhabitants) and downstairs (the maids, cooks, butlers and any other hired help). It's an unflinching and highly compelling look at the way in which minority groups were mistreated at the time (and still are to be honest) and the racism that was rife throughout the Gothic South. Protagonist Jo is what makes this book, though, with her feistiness and desire to be heard. This is a novel that is both entertaining and sensitively highlights the troubles of the time. These heavy issues are perfectly balanced out against the wit and lighthearted humour often coming from Jo herself.

A superb, compulsively readable historical fiction epic. Many thanks to Piatkus for an ARC.

There is no one I trust to write YA historical fiction quite as much as I trust Stacey Lee to write it. She’s out here giving us diverse, well-written and accurate historical fiction, with characters you will root for from page one and just a hint of romance. What more could you ask for?

The Downstairs Girl follows Jo Kuan after she loses her job at a milliner’s and becomes a lady’s maid (a job which she had previously been fired from). Jo and Old Gin, her father figure, live in the unused basement of the Bells’ house, and Jo spends her time listening to their newspaper printing press. The Bells are losing subscribers, so Jo takes it upon herself to become an anonymous agony aunt (and columnist), Miss Sweetie. But as she’s writing, other more sinister (and spoilerish) things are going on.

First and foremost, what I loved about this book was the main character. Stacey Lee has this knack of writing characters you’ll fall in love with within a page or so of meeting them, and Jo is no different in that respect. If I made a list of characters I would die for in this book, Jo would be top (closely followed by Bear, not gonna lie). I also loved the character development various characters went through, but also that particular characters’ development, while appreciated, didn’t mean Jo was obligated to forgive them. Sometimes I feel like forgiveness comes a little too easily in books (and without much work on the part of the one to be forgiven), but here Jo doesn’t forgive so easily and it’s refreshing.

As ever with Stacey Lee’s books, I also loved the setting and how well she wrote it. It’s clear just how much time and research has gone into worldbuilding (which, honestly, is a key reason I prefer adult historical fiction to YA historical fiction most of the time. It just feels like there’s been more research used). In this case, you can almost imagine yourself in the setting and among the characters.

If there was anything at all I didn’t like about it, it was just that its a fairly slow book to start with. Or, so it felt to me. When you get to the second half of the book, there’s a lot more happening, but the first quarter or so dragged just a bit for me. I mean, I still really enjoyed this book, it’s just I have a very short attention span and very little patience a lot of the time.

And all this leads me to say: read this book. Don’t let Stacey Lee go (criminally) underrated any longer.

I'd heard buzz about this book online, a new historical fiction novel with a Chinese-American protagonist, and was very happy to receive an advance copy from the publishers. I'm glad to say that it mostly lived up to my expectations.

The Downstairs Girl is set in late 19th century Atlanta, Georgia and follows seventeen-year-old Jo Kuan as she tries to find a path in a hostile society, It was fascinating to learn about the history of the Chinese community in the US, as typically fiction set in this period is based around a black/white dichotomy, which of course is a crucial part of history. However, it's interesting to read about the nebulous, uneasy position of those who didn't fit into this system, and the particular form of discrimination they faced.

Jo is a brilliant character; she's witty, bold, and constantly uses hat based metaphors (to give more context, at the beginning of the book she is working at a milliners). I loved the Miss Sweetie letters, and the number of puns they contain. It's infuriating how despite her talents she is constantly facing exploitation and threat of dismissal because of her race. Her arc throughout the book is learning how to chart her own course through life, and using every part of her experience to make the next chapter better, which was a message that stuck with me.

The supporting characters are interesting, particularly Jo's friend Noemi who is one of the most badass characters I've ever encountered. Even the 'villains' have depths to them, like some members of the wealthy Payne family that Jo works for and the blackmailing crook Billy Riggs, and there are a few surprises about their histories and motivations. Despite their complexity, they are not absolved of their actions, which is especially important given the specific social context of racism and discrimination against people of colour in the US, which remains entrenched to this day.

Some of the plot developments in this book seemed a bit too convenient or easy, and I feel like some characters did not react strongly enough to one particular revelation. The romance element was definitely secondary to Jo's personal story, which I appreciated, but did feel slightly shoehorned in as a consequence.

This book manages to explore serious topics with sensitivity and nuance, and also contains funny and light moments, without there being too wild a juxtaposition between the two.

I would recommend this book to fans of historical fiction looking to read about diverse experiences.

I loved The Downstairs Girl! Such an entertaining, bold historical YA book I'm glad to have read. I'll definitely read from Stacey Lee again.
I'm a historical fiction fan, and this book didn't disappoint. hits the right spot. The protagonist Jo is someone you'd like to follow. She's sassy, fierce, direct but very considerate. The book handles some sensitive issues very well. jo is a Chinese American girl living in the South, where racism is an issue.

It was a highly entertaining book that was also highlighting important issues of the times very successfully. For that reason, I really enjoyed it.
i'd highly recommend it for lovers of historical fiction.