Thursday, July 18, 2024

Review: The Briar Club

Title: The Briar Club

Author: Kate Quinn

Publisher: 18th July 2024 by HarperCollins Australia

Pages: 400 pages

Genre: Historical Fiction, Women’s Fiction, Mystery

Rating: 5 cups


Synopsis:


A haunting and powerful story of female friendships and secrets in a Washington, D.C. boardinghouse during the McCarthy era.


Washington, D.C., 1950. Everyone keeps to themselves at Briarwood House, a down-at-the-heels all-female boardinghouse in the heart of the nation’s capital, where secrets hide behind white picket fences. But when the lovely, mysterious widow Grace March moves into the attic, she draws her oddball collection of neighbors into unlikely friendship: poised English beauty Fliss whose facade of perfect wife and mother covers gaping inner wounds; police officer’s daughter Nora, who is entangled with a shadowy gangster; frustrated baseball star Bea, whose career has ended along with the women’s baseball league of WWII; and poisonous, gung-ho Arlene, who has thrown herself into McCarthy’s Red Scare. 


Grace’s weekly attic-room dinner parties and window-brewed sun tea become a healing balm on all their lives, but she hides a terrible secret of her own. When a shocking act of violence tears apart the house, the Briar Club women must decide once and for all: Who is the true enemy in their midst?


My Thoughts


When Kate Quinn has a new book out, you drop everything to read it! You are guaranteed not only a great story (her writing is out of this world) but a brilliant lesson in history as well (her research is second to none). Kate is one of my favourite writers and her latest, The Briar Club is a fascinating look at American society during the McCarthy era of the 1950s.


‘… living in a world where a push of a button could end things in one big mushroom cloud. Hard not to wonder if we took a wrong turn somewhere along the line. If we could have done better.’


This book reads somewhat differently to Kate’s previous ones - and I like it! This is very much a character based story with a murder … or two! The Briar Club is the name given to the female tenants of Briarwood House who come together on Thursday nights to share a meal and so much more. Each woman living at the house is given her own chapter and, being such a diverse group, the insight into being a woman in America at this time is eye opening. It is most definitely a slow burn with even the house being a character and providing its own voice to events. 


‘You couldn't find a more different batch of women than the Briar Club … but after so many suppers together they had somehow acquired a shared funny bone, a way of setting each other off that made the laughter contagious when the right joke caught fire.’


When readers draw near to the end and the women’s lives become enmeshed and the pace really starts to increase. Everything you’ve learned about them as individuals comes crashing together and it is here that one really appreciates Kate’s mastery as an author. Seeing how the women bonded and, individually and together, became a formidable unit. The Briar Club was Kate’s post-pandemic book and as she details in her endnotes it “erupted out of a desperate need for light, for connection, for friendship. A need (like Grace's) to gather round the table, to feed, and to fix.”


‘This is the land of second chances … She might have lost her childhood faith that it was the land of opportunity, but second chances? Yes. Opportunities were things that fell in your lap, but second chances had to be fought for - and you could always reinvent yourself in this country.’


The Briar Club is an exploration of female friendships with the burden of secrets set against the backdrop of the McCarthy era USA. The social pressures faced, particularly by women, are brought vividly to life. A slow burn tale that, under Kate’s deft authorship, comes to a thrilling climax.








This review is based on a complimentary copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. The quoted material may have changed in the final release.


 


Wednesday, July 17, 2024

Review: Jackie

Title: Jackie

Author: Dawn Tripp

Publisher: 26th June 2024 by Hachette Australia

Pages: 496 pages

Genre: General Fiction (Adult) | Historical Fiction | Literary Fiction

My Rating: 5 cups


Synopsis:


In this mesmerizing novel about Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, acclaimed author Dawn Tripp has crafted an intimate story of love and power, family and tragedy, loss and reinvention.

The world has divided my life into three:

Life with Jack

Life with Onassis

Life as a woman who goes to work because she wants to.

My life is all of these things, and it is none of these things. They continue to miss what’s right in front of them. I love books. I love the sea. I love horses. Children. Art. Ideas. History. Beauty. Because beauty blows us open to wonder.

Even the beauty that breaks your heart.

Jackie is the story of a woman—deeply private with a nuanced, formidable intellect—who forged a legacy out of grief and shaped history even as she was living it. It is the story of a love affair, a complicated marriage, and the fracturing of identity that comes in the wake of unthinkable violence.

When Jackie meets the charismatic congressman Jack Kennedy in Georgetown, she is twenty-one and dreaming of France. She has won an internship at Vogue. Kennedy, she thinks, is not her kind of adventure: “Too American. Too good-looking. Too boy.” Yet she is drawn to his mind, his humor, his drive. The chemistry between them ignites. During the White House years, the love between two independent people deepens. Then, a motorcade in Dallas: “Three and a half seconds—that’s all it was—a slivered instant between the first shot, which missed the car, and the second, which did not. . . . A hypnotic burst of sunlight off her bracelet as she waved.”

This vivid, exquisitely written novel is at once a captivating work of the imagination and a window into the world of a woman who led many lives: Jackie, Jacks, Jacqueline, Miss Bouvier, Mrs. Kennedy, Jackie O.

My Thoughts


‘When they tell the story of a woman, they never get right up against what she might have felt and thought and seen and feared and wondered.’


Jackie by Dawn Tripp is a powerful book - to have boldly taken something that so many are so familiar with and present it in a new and highly engaging way is quite a feat. I think the above quote sums up beautifully what Dawn has tried to do here with the story of one of the most famous females of the twentieth century - what did Jackie feel? Think? See? Fear? Wonder? Through reading this book I now appreciate how Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis projected a myriad of selves to the world but was seemingly  a very private person who saw, felt, feared and wondered about a great many things. 


‘… the deeper sacrifice, I’ve come to realize, is about power and the accommodations a woman is called on to make. To shrink enough, to be small enough, to fit into the corners of a man’s world, to file down her own edges to be the kind of wife he’ll need, that he and others expect her to be.’


This book takes a look at the courtship, romance and marriage of Jackie to JFK (some time is dedicated to Onassis but only to highlight the impact of that relationship in adding to the incredible life and experiences she witnessed). Dawn Tripp takes everything you think you know about - not only Jackie and Jack, not only American politics of the day and not only that fateful day in Dallas - and reconstructs events in a way that dives deep and, for me, has certainly reshaped my own thoughts and understanding of how things seemingly played out.


‘Why marvel if a woman at a certain point tears off the veils that cover her like a monument - a thirty-nine-year-old monument, still beautiful, extremely alive, obligated to a role that does not belong to her?’


So well researched, this book reads more like a memoir as it takes you through the life that was Jackie. Written in her voice proved a most powerful tool in placing readers front and centre with all the feels of what Jackie experienced. I believe not only will  the stunning sepia cover draw you in but the little snippets of Jack’s opinion on a few rare chapters and the overall incredible piece of history will deeply immerse you and make you a part of one woman’s extraordinary life. 


‘We imagine time will clarify our intention. Who we were, how we lived, what we achieved. We want to believe we will be treated with integrity, with fairness and compassion. But history is not so forgiving, is it?’







This review is based on a complimentary copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. The quoted material may have changed in the final release.




Friday, July 12, 2024

Review: A Novel Love Story

Title: A Novel Love Story

Author: Ashley Poston

Publisher: 3rd July 2023 by HQ Fiction

Pages: 357 pages

Genre: General Fiction (Adult) | Romance | Romantic Comedy

Rating: 4.5 cups


Synopsis:


Have you ever found yourself lost in a good book … literally? 

Eileen Merriweather loves a good love story. The fictional kind, anyway. After all, imaginary men don’t break your heart.

That’s why she’s so excited for her annual book club retreat – instead, when her car breaks down en route, Eileen finds herself in Eloraton. A town where every meet is cute, the rain always comes in the afternoon, and the bookshop is always curated with impeccable taste.

It feels too good to be true … because Eloraton is the setting of her favourite romance series. And Eileen is sure she must be here to bring the town its storybook ending.

But there’s one character she can’t place. The grumpy bookshop owner with mint-green eyes, and an irritatingly sexy mouth. He does not want Eileen to finish this story, but how else can she find her happily-ever-after?


My Thoughts


‘These books were like arms I fell into, armour that protected me from the world when life got too hard.’


Ashley Poston is back with her third magical realism, modern romance story and I could not be happier! This book has been highly anticipated and her followers are sure to enjoy this one.I believe it is the pure creativity that Ashley brings to her romance writing that makes it such a unique and engaging reading experience. The writing is heartfelt and I was thoroughly invested with the storyline from the outset. I loved the short, sharp chapters and even the good old fashion chapter headings that give you clues as to what will be upcoming. I would flick back and give that knowing nod upon completion. Brilliant. Not to mention, the wonderful love of all things literature scattered throughout. Equally heartwarming and heartbreaking with the use of the magical realism being so ‘magical’ and ‘real’ that Ashley makes it look so easy. 


This story is a love letter to book lovers everywhere as it is filled with so many beautiful quotes highlighting the great passion we all have towards literature. A heartbroken girl finds herself stranded in her favourite fictional town (think Brigadoon). Elsy will meet all her favourite characters and a certain bookshop owner who must be a forthcoming character. Or is he?


Books by Ashley Poston get me so excited because I know it will be infused with so much magic that her writing is bound to sweep you away. So allow yourself to get swept away in this witty, whimsical tale filled with pure refreshing escapism. 


’I think that’s why I love these books so much … to show me that there were still happy endings to be found … even if they weren’t mine.’






This review is based on a complimentary copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. The quoted material may have changed in the final release.