Genre: Historical Fiction

Number of Pages: 384

Date of Publication: 26 February 2026

Publisher: William Morrow/Harper 360 UK

Thanks so much to the Publisher/Random Things Tours for sending me this gifted copy in exchange for an honest review. This is not a paid post — all opinions are my own.

📖 PLOT SUMMARY FROM GOODREADS 📖 

1552, The print­ing press is quickly spreading new ideas across Europe, threatening the power of church and state and unleashing a wave of book burning and heretic hunting. When frightened ex-nun Lysbette Angiers arrives at Charlotte Guillard’s famous printing shop with her manuscript, neither woman knows just how far the powerful elite will go to prevent the spread of Lysbette’s audacious ideas. 1952, NEW Milly Bennett is a lonely housewife struggling to find her way in her new neighborhood amidst the paranoid clamors of McCarthy’s America. She finds her life taking an unexpected turn when a relic from her past presents her with a 400-year-old manuscript to decipher, pulling her into a vortex of danger that threatens to shatter her world.

From the risky backstreets of sixteenth-century Paris to the unpredictable suburbs of mid-twentieth century New York, the stakes couldn’t be higher when, 400 years apart, Milly, Lysbette, and Charlotte each face a reality where the spread of ideas are feared and every effort is made to suppress them.

Dramatic and affecting, and inspired by the real-life encrypted Voynich manuscript, Book of Forbidden Words is both an engrossing story about a timeless struggle that echoes through the ages and a testament to the indomitable spirit of those who dare to let their words be heard.

💭 THOUGHTS 💭 

I do enjoy an Historical Fiction featuring books, so I was pleased to be accepted onto the Blog Tour for this book. It was an excellent read and actually, in some ways, still quite relevant to today. 

The writing was engaging from the beginning right through to the end. There were some emotional parts and thought provoking moments, all blended well together to make this an interesting story. There was a good mix of fact and fiction, which gave the story a more realistic feel to it. It was interesting to see where the author got her inspiration from. 

The chapters were fairly long and sometimes split by the illustration of a book. This meant that you could immerse yourself more fully in each timeline before moving on. Each chapter was titled with the person, place and time that you were reading about, which was helpful as you went back and forth in time. I enjoyed reading the story from the different character perspectives. 

There was a good flow between the chapters despite jumping from character to character, place to place and time to time. The different storylines worked well alongside one another and tied up well at the end. 

There was a good pace to the story, with everything gradually coming together to make the story whole. There were lots of little things happening all the time in each storyline to keep it moving forward well. 

The characters were excellent. I really felt for the main characters who had to make some difficult decisions. I was completely drawn into their world and felt the consequences of their final choices. They were ahead of their time and it was interesting to see how that played out. Scarily enough the main crux of the story is still relevant today. We haven’t moved on as much as we think we have and realistically we are probably moving backwards. 

Lastly the settings. There were some lovely details in each of the storylines, which grounded the story well and enabled you to visualise where the characters were in their respective timelines. 

Overall an enjoyable, thought provoking read. I highly recommend.

✏️AUTHOR✏️

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