"I've learned a thing or two in my antiquity--chief among them that things are seldom what they seem. Often the person who appears the most...impenetrable...is, in truth, the most fragile."I'm going to be honest: I requested this one for the cover. I am a sucker for art deco aesthetic and while I don't read a lot of historical fiction these days, I was intrigued. The book wasn't quite what I expected - this was more Women's Fiction to me, and I struggle to connect with these kinds of stories. Looking at the synopsis again now, this is really my bad here.
This one was a slow starter, friends. Kelly has quite a cast of characters spanning two different timelines and the first several chapters are spent acquainting the reader with the family tree and how they are all connected. It took until almost the halfway mark for the plot to really pick up for me, but I liked how Kelly wove the story and I was eager to see how the characters' lives intertwined.
This is a well-written family drama that follows Joanna in the 1960s and her mother-in-law Susanna in the 1920s. Joanna's a mother of two small children and the family recently relocated to her husband's family home in Bethlehem, with Susanna and her grandmother-in-law Hetty still in residence. The pieces come together slowly but when the plot really got going I was in for the long haul!
I enjoyed Kelly's writing style quite a lot and that is primarily what kept me reading. It's a solid debut and one I would recommend to readers who enjoy Women's Fiction. Ultimately this book wasn't the story I was looking for, but I enjoyed reading it.Many thanks to St. Martins Press for sending me an eARC via Netgalley for my honest review! Quotations are taken from an uncorrected proof and may change in final publication.
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