Colorful, in more ways than one ... Albanese’s consideration of inherited guilt also encompasses questions about culpability for forebears’ enrichment through slave trade and labor ... Albanese has tapped into a rich vein of historical fiction that reimagines famous novels from a female character’s point of view ... In addition to her extraordinary talent for embroidery, Isobel is blessed – or cursed, in her late mother’s opinion, who feared its association with sorcery – with what we now know as synesthesia ... Unfortunately, weaving this unusual condition into the narrative comes to feel like a heavy-handed distraction ... Albanese carefully offsets...villains with a wonderful, multiracial cast of supportive, heroic men and women whom Isobel comes to love ... Hester is an inspirational tale about the importance of self-determination and the power of women joining together to overcome oppression in its many forms.

Engrossing ... Hester posits an intriguing theory about the origins of The Scarlet Letter ... Albanese enlivens Hester with many era-specific details ... Much of Hester is about secrets, and Albanese persuasively illustrates how a secret can empower or corrode the spirit of the person carrying it ... In the book’s only structural distraction, Albanese alternates the main story with vignettes of Nat’s and Isobel’s ancestors. Less would have been more, so as not to slow the momentum of an otherwise compelling tale.

... vivid and emotionally rich ... Isobel's synesthesia is a gift as a seamstress, but as Albanese ramps up the tension in a harrowing plot, it becomes evident that her belief in her gift has skewed her sense of others. A world built on visual difference offers us back only our distorted reflections. In order for Isobel to survive, she will have to learn to apprehend what lies beneath the cloth she stitches for others.

For anyone who has read Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and come away with a passionate, protective love for Hester Prynne, author Laurie Lico Albanese has penned the perfect prequel/reimagining of this tragic heroine and the woman who may have served as Hawthorne’s inspiration for her ... Sensuous, gorgeously written and meticulously researched, Hester is not only the ideal companion read to Hawthorne’s classic, it is an expertly crafted work of historical fiction in its own right. Albanese has perfectly absorbed the tone and spirit of her source material, but more than that, she has built her own stunning framework to cast The Scarlet Letter into the future and into the hands of a whole new generation of readers. But don’t let the connection scare you. Neither a textbook nor a reimagining of the original, it’s something entirely new ... With conscientious and diligent research into the witch trials, the slave trade, the work of a seamstress, and life in early 19th-century America, Albanese has created a rich, immersive window into life as a newly arrived American during one of the more tumultuous and change-driven periods of American history. There are sharp, searing takedowns of misogyny, racism and classism woven throughout, but the viewpoints and ideologies never feel anachronistic, a difficult balance to achieve for even the most experienced authors. Albanese has done her due diligence and far more, creating a work that not only honors its source but transcends it.

Descriptions of how synesthetes perceive and the creativity of Isobel’s needlework are engaging and aid in character development. With a subplot about Isobel’s Black neighbors, who have secrets of their own, Albanese’s novel will engage readers seeking racial themes, a resilient heroine, and a feminist origin story for one of America’s always relevant nineteenth-century classics.

Standout ... Even those unfamiliar with the classic will be hooked by this account of a capable woman standing up to the sexist and racial prejudices of her time.

The author has incorporated plentiful research about the witch trials and, in Isobel’s present, the Underground Railroad. The rich details of life in Salem in the early 19th century, and especially about Isobel’s creative work as a seamstress and designer, enliven the tale ... Nathaniel Hawthorne plays an unexpected role in this lively fictional look at the origins of his masterpiece.