Review: The Glass Ocean by Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, Karen White

From the New York Times bestselling authors of The Forgotten Room comes a captivating historical mystery, infused with romance, that links the lives of three women across a century—two deep in the past, one in the present—to the doomed passenger liner, RMS Lusitania.

May 2013 Her finances are in dire straits and bestselling author Sarah Blake is struggling to find a big idea for her next book. Desperate, she breaks the one promise she made to her Alzheimer’s-stricken mother and opens an old chest that belonged to her great-grandfather, who died when the RMS Lusitania was sunk by a German U-Boat in 1915. What she discovers there could change history. Sarah embarks on an ambitious journey to England to enlist the help of John Langford, a recently disgraced Member of Parliament whose family archives might contain the only key to the long-ago catastrophe. . . .

April 1915 Southern belle Caroline Telfair Hochstetter’s marriage is in crisis. Her formerly attentive industrialist husband, Gilbert, has become remote, pre-occupied with business . . . and something else that she can’t quite put a finger on. She’s hoping a trip to London in Lusitania’s lavish first-class accommodations will help them reconnect—but she can’t ignore the spark she feels for her old friend, Robert Langford, who turns out to be on the same voyage. Feeling restless and longing for a different existence, Caroline is determined to stop being a bystander, and take charge of her own life. . . .

Tessa Fairweather is traveling second-class on the Lusitania, returning home to Devon. Or at least, that’s her story. Tessa has never left the United States and her English accent is a hasty fake. She’s really Tennessee Schaff, the daughter of a roving con man, and she can steal and forge just about anything. But she’s had enough. Her partner has promised that if they can pull off this one last heist aboard the Lusitania, they’ll finally leave the game behind. Tess desperately wants to believe that, but Tess has the uneasy feeling there’s something about this job that isn’t as it seems. . . .

As the Lusitania steams toward its fate, three women work against time to unravel a plot that will change the course of their own lives . . . and history itself.

Kindle, 416 pages

Expected publication: September 4th, 2018

by William Morrow

*** 1/2

The Glass Ocean is the 2nd collaboration between talented authors Karen White, Beatriz Williams and Lauren Willig. Their first book together, The Forgotten Room was a favorite of mine back in 2016. Needless to say, I was excited when William Morrow provided me with an advanced copy of this their latest.

I didn’t know much about the Lusitania other than it was hit by a German torpedo during World War One and ushered the US into war. With 3 different narrators it wasn’t hard to keep the two time periods straight, two from the past and one present day.

The beginning 1/3 of this book pulled me in with its character building and intriguing plot. The dual time periods are books I usually enjoy, though at times it can be one time period that interests me more. Such was the case here (to some extent). To be honest, I struggled with the past plot, maybe because it dragged on a little longer than I thought necessary or maybe just a slight confusion at times. What saved it for me were the comedic bantering that was needed (pretty sure that was William’s part).

I struggled between giving this book 3 or 4 stars. Frustration grew when a change of direction occurred towards the end of the present day story (yea I felt it out of place and it really bugged me). But as I continued reading I ‘got it’ and thought it a great addition- sometimes you just need to sit back and trust the writer.

So I'm giving this book 3 1/2 stars rounding up to 4.

My thanks to William Morrow for an advanced copy (via Edelweiss).

click on cover for my review

Review & Giveaway: Fall of Poppies: Stories of Love and the Great War By Hazel Gaynor, Beatriz Williams, Jennifer Robson, Jessica Brockmole, Kate Kerrigan, Evangeline Holland, Lauren Willig, Marci Jefferson, and Heather Webb

Top voices in historical fiction deliver an unforgettable collection of short stories set in the aftermath of World War I—featuring bestselling authors such as Hazel Gaynor, Jennifer Robson, Beatriz Williams, and Lauren Willig and edited by Heather Webb.

On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month... November 11, 1918.

After four long, dark years of fighting, the Great War ends at last, and the world is forever changed. For soldiers, loved ones, and survivors the years ahead stretch with new promise, even as their hearts are marked by all those who have been lost. As families come back together, lovers reunite, and strangers take solace in each other, everyone has a story to tell.

In this moving anthology, nine authors share stories of love, strength, and renewal as hope takes root in a fall of poppies.

Publication Date: March 1, 2016 

William Morrow Paperback &

eBook; 368 Pages

Genre: Historical Fiction/Anthology  

****

The theme of Fall of Poppies is the end of World War I.

  Penned by 9 different authors, seven of which I am familiar with, this collection of short stories pulls at the heart strings and reminds the reader that even if the war is over mentally and physically it lives on.

"Not even the end of the war means the war is over.    It will never be over for some of us."

I will admit to being new to the short stories genre, my fear has always been that the stories will be light and fluffy, lacking depth and the ability to connect with the characters in such a short time.  The stories here averaged less than an hour to read each, so really how can the writer provide the reading experience that I enjoy?   As I am slowly learning it can be done and it was done quite nicely here.

This book is a collection of stories of love, hope and survival.  Told from the both the male and female pov's it wasn't hard to connect and feel compassion.  I won't go into details about what each of the stories were about, but will say that they were all different.  From a young mother in Belgium who lived through the horrors of war, she survived caring for others and learned to trust again. Another mother seeking revenge on Germany when her son is missing and presumed dead. There are pilots. an English midwife fighting to save to life of a newborn and more.

I had my favorites here, Jennifer Robson's "All for the Love of You" because of the connection to her last novel and I love her writing style.  Her's was an interest subject, the making of face masks for those disfigured.  She was able to not just explain the process but threw in a good love story to boot.

Jessica Brockmole's "Something Worth Landing For" also hit the mark for me.  An unlikely union, but watching the relationship evolve through letter writing reminding me so much of why her book Letters from Skye was one of my 'best of 2015'.  Her writing style is flawless, witty and a treat to read.

The stories here are varied, each stand alone's but focus on Armistice, bringing that time to life with different struggles, misunderstandings, relationships and romance.  Definitely one that I recommend and one that has me adding new authors to my tbr pile.

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-a-Million | IndieBound

About the Authors

Jessica Brockmole is the author of the internationally bestselling Letters from Skye, an epistolary love story spanning an ocean and two wars. Named one of Publisher’s Weekly’s Best Books of 2013, Letters From Skye has been published in seventeen countries.

Hazel Gaynor is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Girl Who Came Home and A Memory of Violets. She writes regularly for the national press, magazines and websites in Ireland and the UK.

Evangeline Holland is the founder and editor of Edwardian Promenade, the number one blog for lovers of World War I, the Gilded Age, and Belle Époque France with nearly forty thousand unique viewers a month. In addition, she blogs at Modern Belles of History. Her fiction includes An Ideal Duchess and its sequel, crafted in the tradition of Edith Warton.

Marci Jefferson is the author of Girl on the Golden Coin: A Novel of Frances Stuart, which Publisher’s Weekly called “intoxicating.” Her second novel, The Enchantress of Paris, will release in Spring 2015 from Thomas Dunne Books.

Kate Kerrigan is the New York Times bestselling author of The Ellis Island trilogy. In addition she has written for the Irish Tatler, a Dublin-based newspaper, as well as The Irish Mail and a RTE radio show, Sunday Miscellany.

Jennifer Robson is the USA Today and international bestselling author of Somewhere in France and After the War is Over. She holds a doctorate in Modern History from the University of Oxford, where she was a Commonwealth Scholar and SSHRC Doctoral Fellow. Jennifer lives in Toronto with her husband and young children.

Heather Webb is an author, freelance editor, and blogger at award-winning writing sites WriterUnboxed.com and RomanceUniversity.org. Heather is a member of the Historical Novel Society and the Women’s Fiction Writers Association, and she may also be found teaching craftbased courses at a local college.

Beatriz Williams is the New York Times, USA Today, and international bestselling author of The Secret Life of Violet Grant and A Hundred Summers. A graduate of Stanford University with an MBA from Columbia, Beatriz spent several years in New York and London hiding her early attempts at fiction, first on company laptops as a corporate and communications strategy consultant, and then as an at-home producer of small persons. She now lives with her husband and four children near the Connecticut shore, where she divides her time between writing and laundry. William Morrow will publish her forthcoming hardcover, A Certain Age, in the summer of 2016.

Lauren Willig is the New York Times bestselling author of eleven works of historical fiction. Her books have been translated into over a dozen languages, awarded the RITA, Booksellers Best and Golden Leaf awards, and chosen for the American Library Association’s annual list of the best genre fiction. She lives in New York City, where she now writes full time.

Blog Tour Schedule

Tuesday, March 1 Review at Let Them Read Books 

Thursday, March 3 Review at Just One More Chapter

Saturday, March 5 Review at 100 Pages a Day 

Monday, March 7 Review at Bookish 

                                Review at CelticLady's Reviews 

Tuesday, March 8 Review at Ageless Pages Reviews 

Friday, March 11 Review at Creating Herstory

Giveaway

To win one of three copies of Fall of Poppies: Stories of Love and the Great War please enter the giveaway via the GLEAM form below.

Rules – Giveaway ends at 11:59pm EST on March 11th. You must be 18 or older to enter.
– Giveaway is open to US residents only.
– Only one entry per household.
– All giveaway entrants agree to be honest and not cheat the systems; any suspect of fraud is decided upon by blog/site owner and the sponsor, and entrants may be disqualified at our discretion
– Winner has 48 hours to claim prize or new winner is chosen.

  Fall of Poppies: Stories of Love and The Great War

Review: The Forgotten Room by Karen White, Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig

New York Times bestselling authors Karen White, Beatriz Williams, and Lauren Willig present a masterful collaboration—a rich, multigenerational novel of love and loss that spans half a century....

1945: When the critically wounded Captain Cooper Ravenal is brought to a private hospital on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, young Dr. Kate Schuyler is drawn into a complex mystery that connects three generations of women in her family to a single extraordinary room in a Gilded Age mansion.

Who is the woman in Captain Ravenel's portrait miniature who looks so much like Kate?  And why is she wearing the ruby pendant handed down to Kate by her mother?  In their pursuit of answers, they find themselves drawn into the turbulent stories of Gilded Age. Olive Van Alen, driven from riches to rags, who hired out as a servant in the very house her father designed, and Jazz Age Lucy Young, who came from Brooklyn to Manhattan in pursuit of the father she had never known.  But are Kate and Cooper ready for the secrets that will be revealed in the Forgotten Room?

The Forgotten Room, set in alternating time periods, is a sumptuous feast of a novel brought to vivid life by three brilliant storytellers.

Hardcover, 384 pages

Expected publication: January 19th 2016 by NAL

arc via publisher through netgalley 

  *****

I am relatively new to some of these authors.  Karen White is brand new to me, I read Lauren Willig only once previously (The Other Daughter) and Beatriz Williams has turned into a favorite of mine since reading about a couple of the Schuyler sisters (hummm, same name coincidence there?).  Also reading one book by more than one author is also a new experience, seems to be a trend these days.

To be very honest when I requested this book I think I was caught up in all the media hype surrounding it that I really didn't even pay attention to the synopsis.  Sometimes going blind into a book is a good thing and other times not so much.  With The Forgotten Room is was a good thing.

This book grabbed me right from the beginning and didn't let go.  Well, that is once I got over the urge to solve the mystery and figure out the connections within the first three chapters, then I just sat back and enjoyed watching the stories unfold.  Half way through The Forgotten Room it finally dawned on me that this was penned by 3 different authors and I had forgotten that just because of the simple fact that I couldn't tell when one finished and another began, the story just flowed along at a nice pace and with no glaring disjointed scenes.

The Forgotten Room is a story about forbidden love and not being true to yourself.  There are secrets, deception and heartache in the lives of Olive, Lucy and Kate and it wasn't hard to feel their pain and frustrations.  Dual time periods are a favorite of mine, it keeps me on my toes and usually I am trying to figure the connections before revealed by the author(s).   The Forgotten Room had me captivated right from the beginning and keep me guessing with the twists and turns.

I would have loved some authors notes here, not just about the story or time period but about process, how 3 authors penning this. (ie who wrote what? Did each take a character and share them?)

As much as I loved the cover, it is subtle and rather romantic but I didn't really think it matched the story.  I am thinking narrow curved stairway, that ruby pendant or even the wall mural would have done justice here.  Remember just my opinion.

All in all a great read and great way to start my reading for 2016 and thank you to the publishers for the chance to review this one.

Review: The Other Daughter by Lauren Willig

Raised in a poor yet genteel household, Rachel Woodley is working in France as a governess when she receives news that her mother has died, suddenly. Grief-stricken, she returns to the small town in England where she was raised to clear out the cottage...and finds a cutting from a London society magazine, with a photograph of her supposedly deceased father dated all of three month before. He's an earl, respected and influential, and he is standing with another daughter-his legitimate daughter. Which makes Rachel...not legitimate. Everything she thought she knew about herself and her past-even her very name-is a lie.

Still reeling from the death of her mother, and furious at this betrayal, Rachel sets herself up in London under a new identity. There she insinuates herself into the party-going crowd of Bright Young Things, with a steely determination to unveil her father's perfidy and bring his-and her half-sister's-charmed world crashing down. Very soon, however, Rachel faces two unexpected snags: she finds she genuinely likes her half-sister, Olivia, whose situation isn't as simple it appears; and she might just be falling for her sister's fiancé...

From Lauren Willig, author of the New York Times bestselling novel The Ashford Affair, comes The Other Daughter, a page-turner full of deceit, passion, and revenge.
 

Kindle Edition, 305 pages

Published July 21st 2015 by St. Martin's Press 

*** 1/2 

This is my first book by Lauren Willig and to be honest I didn't read much of the synopsis when requesting this from netgalley, she is an author I've been wanting to read for a while now.

 

The story gets off to a great start, with Rachel reviewing sad news (see synopsis above) and journeys back to England.  The plot was interesting, though not always original but watching events unfold left me surprised in a few instances.  It isn't a huge book, coming in at 304 pages and I would have loved a little more depth.  Rachel I got to know and got her character, but it was the others I would have liked to connect with and gotten to know better, especially her sister and father.

Romance has never been one of my 'go to' genres, but I honestly thought there would be more of it here.  What little there was didn't always ring true to me.

The author definitely knows her time period, the settings, descriptions rang true and I had no problem visualizing so much.  It was an entertaining story and my thanks to St. Martin's Press (via netgalley) for the opportunity to review The Other Daughter.

Waiting on Wednesday: Fall of Poppies - Stories of Love and the Great War

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly event that is hosted by Jill  at  Breaking the Spine and spotlights upcoming releases that we’re eagerly anticipating.   

 This week I am waiting for:

Paperback, 356 pages

Expected publication: March 1st 2016 by William Morrow Paperbacks 

Top voices in historical fiction deliver an intensely moving collection of short stories about loss, longing, and hope in the aftermath of World War I—featuring bestselling authors such as Hazel Gaynor, Jennifer Robson, Beatriz Williams, and Lauren Willig and edited by Heather Webb.

A squadron commander searches for meaning in the tattered photo of a girl he’s never met…

A Belgian rebel hides from the world, only to find herself nursing the enemy…

A young airman marries a stranger to save her honor—and prays to survive long enough to love her…

The peace treaty signed on November 11, 1918, may herald the end of the Great War but for its survivors, the smoke is only beginning to clear. Picking up the pieces of shattered lives will take courage, resilience, and trust.

Within crumbled city walls and scarred souls, war’s echoes linger. But when the fighting ceases, renewal begins…and hope takes root in a fall of poppies.

What are you waiting for?

Waiting on Wednesday: The Forgotten Room by Karen White, Beatriz Williams and Lauren Willig

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly event that is hosted by Jill  at  Breaking the Spine and spotlights upcoming releases that we’re eagerly anticipating.   

 This week I am waiting for:

 

Hardcover, 384 pages

Expected publication: January 19th 2016 by NAL 

 

New York Times bestselling authors Karen White, Beatriz Williams, and Lauren Willig present a masterful collaboration—a rich, multigenerational novel of love and loss that spans half a century....

1945: When the critically wounded Captain Cooper Ravenal is brought to a private hospital on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, young Dr. Kate Schuyler is drawn into a complex mystery that connects three generations of women in her family to a single extraordinary room in a Gilded Age mansion.

Who is the woman in Captain Ravenel's portrait miniature who looks so much like Kate?  And why is she wearing the ruby pendant handed down to Kate by her mother?  In their pursuit of answers, they find themselves drawn into the turbulent stories of Gilded Age Olive Van Alen, driven from riches to rags, who hired out as a servant in the very house her father designed, and Jazz Age Lucy Young, who came from Brooklyn to Manhattan in pursuit of the father she had never known.  But are Kate and Cooper ready for the secrets that will be revealed in the Forgotten Room?

The Forgotten Room, set in alternating time periods, is a sumptuous feast of a novel brought to vivid life by three brilliant storytellers.

What are you waiting for?