Art plus writers plus women should equal an irresistible combination. The first book in this series, Women Who Read Are Dangerous was educational, visually stunning, and a joy to read. When I heard this book was coming out, I was ecstatic. Unfortunately, it doesn't come close to its predecessor.

The intro was my favorite part, as it discussed how, historically, many women achieved literary success in their later years, after their children were grown. It also talked about the battle between women and children, whether they had any, and how women came to dominate the children's book category. It was fascinating, and illuminated some new angles, but that was the only saving grace for this book.

The first letdown was this book wasn't about art at all. It was just about women writers. This isn't a bad thing, but it seriously messed with my reader's expectations. I was expecting to read about how art depicted women writing various mediums: letters, diaries, household accounts, articles, and eventually books. I was also hoping to read about how women affected the growth of various genres like gothic fiction and sensational fiction, but that was also not the case.

This book seriously suffered from a lack of direction. Some author profiles focused on the author's life. Some on their works. Others, one what their contemporaries thought of them. Worse, some profiles discussed other authors more than the one printed there on the page. For example, when Bollman talks about Astrid Lindgren, the creator of Pippi Longstocking, he spends half the page talking about Lucy Maud Montgomery's Anne Shirley instead. As a result, I felt I didn't understand the women I was reading about. Not only that, I felt jolted around, like I was on an old roller coaster, unsure if it was safe for use. Overall, the information was incomplete, lacking, and severely disappointing.

Couple this with the fact that several, pioneering women weren't even included in this book, and I began to wonder if this book actually celebrated women writers at all. Mary Shelley is missing from its pages, aside from one line indicating she's the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft. Shelley birthed the science fiction genre! How could she not be included? Other notable women excluded from this book include Phillis Wheatley the African American poet, Louisa May Alcott, Emily Dickinson, Edith Wharton as the first woman to win the Pulitzer prize, George Eliot, Juana de la Cruz, and many more. Now, I understand that this book can only hold so many women, but because so many prominent women were missing, the women included felt like they only won because they were the author's favorites. It was some weird popularity contest that included a bunch of Eastern European women writers and frequent mentions of Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, and Sylvia Plath. With all due respect to Ms. Plath, the only reason she was mentioned so often was because the author was fascinated by her suicide, and it got tiring really quickly.

Overall, only read this book if you want to learn about Eastern European women who kind of had an impact on the overall scheme of women writing. Otherwise, you're better off scouring Wikipedia for your favorite authors. You won't find them in this book. ( )