My Top Five Historical Fiction Books

I’ve been sharing my top five books across different genres as a reintroduction to my reading preferences. Now I still consider historical fiction to be one of my favorite genres. However, according to my Goodreads account I haven’t picked up a historical fiction in quite some time. Anyhow, here are my top five historical fiction books. Let’s get going.

The Century Trilogy

I can only vouch for The Fall of Giants and Winter of the World, but I love this series thus far. They are chunky books that follow a lot of characters from the First World War through the 1980s. I’ve never read anything quite as dynamic as this series, and I can’t say enough about it.

All the Light We Cannot See

I read All the Light We Cannot See in high school, and I still think about it often. It follows a blind French girl through the Nazi occupation in Paris. She makes an unlikely friend in Werner an engineer for the Nazi party. All the while, Marie-Laure is hiding a dangerous gem from the Natural History Museum to protect it from the invaders. It sounds like a lot going on, and there is, but it’s done in a heartbreakingly beautiful way.

The Green Glass Sea

The Green Glass Sea is young adult book that I read in middle school. I went through a period of time where I was fascinated by the Manhattan Project and the secrecy surrounding it. This is to this day the best fictional book I’ve read on the subject. The main character is an eleven-year-old girl that has to relocate to Los Alamos when her mathematician father gets a new job. Dewey doesn’t know what happening, but she can feel that her family is part of something more than they realize. It’s interesting to see everyday life in juxtaposition to this massive project.

Where the Crawdads Sing

I don’t know if Where the Crawdads Sing technically counts as a historical fiction. It probably crosses more into literary fiction, but it’s set in the 60s. And I picked it up because of that. Ultimately, it’s a coming-of-age story that turns into a murder mystery. When local boy Chase Andrews goes missing many people blame the local “Marsh Girl”. People begin to judge her on what they believe she’s like, but Kya is an intelligent, sensitive girl that learned how to survive on her own in the marshes of North Carolina.

The Dear America Series

Lastly, I couldn’t make this list without the books that started it all. The Dear America series has had me hooked since elementary school. The Winter of Red Snow was the first one I read, and I still remember that feeling to this day. And honestly, I still read them to this day. If you’re not familiar with this series they’re written like diaries from young girls during historical time periods. For example, The Winter of Red Snow was the diary of a girl living through the Civil War. There are tons of these and a few spinoffs. If you’re a historical fiction lover, I would still suggest checking these out even if you’re not the intended audience.

So those are my top five historical fiction books (and series). And like I said in the beginning it’s been a minute since I’ve read one. Drop your recommendations below.