emotional hopeful mysterious sad slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Three alternating storylines, each told by a different author.

Olive's story takes place in 1892. Lucy's story is in 1920. Kate's in 1944.

All three women are tied together. Ironically, all three of them also lived in the same building.

Olive shows up at the mansion as a maid, trying to defend her father's honor. But she falls in love with Harry, the son of her employer at the mansion.

Lucy is living at the mansion, which is now a home for respectable women. She works at a law office and she is trying to figure out whether Harry was her real father.
Meanwhile, she finds herself choosing between two men who have both declared their live for her.

Kate is a doctor. She works at a building that was formerly the mansion/ formerly the home for respectable women. She also lives at the hospital because she's there so often that it doesn't make sense to rent anywhere.

One day Kate meets a mysterious man, with a painting of a woman who looks just like her. The woman is even wearing a necklace that belongs to Kate. The man sees this woman as his muse.

I found the story interesting and I'd been itching to read it. I've read Kate White books before but hadn't read Beatriz Williams or Lauren Willig and have been building a TBR pile of their books.
I know each other wrote different characters but I'm not sure who wrote which.

I found the book distracting in the regard that I was always trying to guess who was related. Then I wasn't sure whether I was supposed to have figured it out, or whether I was supposed to just relax and let the book explain it in some big reveal.
The reason this was distracting to me was because I was just trying to figure out how it would work out that Kate and her love interest were not related.

Thank God they weren't lol
Can you imagine? That's not a twist I wanted.
Anyway, I did figure it out before getting to the answer in the book, and I'm ok with that.
There were so many coincidences between these characters' lives that the twist actually makes sense for them.

This book relies on its ending justifying how annoying these women are but then the ending disappoints and it’s like why did I read this? I did read the whole book though so for that I am giving it 2 stars

Oh no. I guess I was expecting much more of a mystery and much less of a romance novel. My library has this filed under Fiction, but it's very heavy on the "love story" aspects; the so-called "mystery" is not much of a mystery at all -- I put most of the pieces together from very early on.

But speaking of the "mystery,"
SpoilerKate figures out her grandmother's connection to the Pratt mansion by spotting her in a photograph from a 1893 newspaper clipping. (For the record, Kate's story takes place in 1944, so said clipping is 50 years old at this point.) Really? For one, photography in newspapers was rare during this time period, even for major news events. A candid picture from an engagement party in the society section? Unlikely at best. A candid picture that is clear enough for someone to identify a person in the background? From a 50-years-old newspaper clipping of that picture? And she can also recognize the necklace that person-in-the-background is wearing? That is patently absurd.


The love interests are all hunky and described in classic romance-novel fashion: a man's eyes can't just be green, they are "marsh green depths"! But wait, there's more; the heroes are also conveniently shirtless a lot, so we can get in some mentions of their hot bods, too.

Kate is a doctor at a hospital that's so packed, they have to use the dreamily romantic, secret upper room for, conveniently, the hunkiest patient (and only him). Kate is never shown tending to any other patients, despite the fact that she is a doctor and this place is stuffed to the gills, and she seems to have an abundance of free time
Spoilerto spend spooning with Cooper. Cooper has nightmares, by the way, but instead of the other nurses just, you know, waking him up, they have to run and get Kate, because she's the only one who can comfort him! Right. Oh, and that whole "I've been sketching you my whole life" thing comes off as a lot more "creep-o" than "romantic," in my book.


Then there are sentences like this: "Matron looked at Lucy sternly over the rims of her spectacles, spectacles that appeared to be there for no purpose other than overlooking potentially problematic young female persons." The use of the word "overlooking" is awkward here, as I read it in the "failing to notice something" sense and not the "view from above" sense. Different wording would easily fix this.

"Lucy had left her German name behind in Brooklyn with her grandmother's disapproval, with sauerkraut and sausages and the squish of dough between her fingers."

Did her grandmother disapprove of Lucy leaving her German name behind? Or did she leave behind her German name and also her grandmother's disapproval, sauerkraut, etc.?

"'He sounds a bit like Huck Finn. Mark Twain,' he added. [. . .] 'I seem to remember something about whitewashing fences.'"

That's Tom Sawyer, though, not Huck Finn. I can't determine if this is a deliberate error or not.

"...demanded Gus, in his voice that sounded like cigar smoke passed over gravel."

Huh? Smoke doesn't make sound, which makes this a nonsense sentence. Context clues tell us that the author intends to convey that Gus has a gravelly smoker's voice. So just say that he has a gravelly smoker's voice, and don't give us this forced "poetical" garbage.

"...drawling out the words so that the sound was as thick as the scent of wisteria from the flowers twining around the trellis on the walls."

Just... ugh.

Spoiler"Father...Her mother had managed to gasp out. With the last of her feeble strength she pushed the pendant toward Lucy. Legacy."

Ah, yes. The classic "ambiguous deathbed message." A staple of melodrama.


"...her eyes appeared to mist, becoming twin pools of shallow blue water."

Describing anyone's eyes as "twin pools" is the fastest possible way to get me to roll mine.

Okay, I'll stop, and wrap up by saying that I never felt invested in any of the "love stories." All three women know their love interests for only a matter of weeks or months, and their main tie seems to be physical attraction.
SpoilerThen Olive and Lucy spend the rest of their lives miserably pining over those short-lived flings instead of learning to truly love the men they marry, who apparently adore them for some reason. Olive's reasons for leaving Harry don't hold water for me, nor is it at all apparent why Harry felt the need to change his name and never tell his children his real identity.


It's all just silly, overwrought nonsense. Pass.

Read this one for the "book with multiple authors" prompt of the 2017 PopSugar Reading Challenge.

Really enjoyed this book, loved how all of the stories were connected.

Oh man, this book. I cannot imagine the time it took to so intricately weave together 3 storylines. Nevertheless, it was done so perfectly. I was happy, I was sad, I was dying to find out what happened the entire time. I hope to see more collaborations by these 3 authors in the future because they hit it out of the park on this one.

The ending! Definitely a feel good book in this weird world health pandemic time we are in right now. I loved the intertwining of the storylines; it really had me thinking throughout the entirety of the book. I had a number of moments where I was screaming inside at the charactors for their decisions, as well as thinking how different it would be had they decided alternatively. Very good read, also served as a non-depressing, quick-paced read to get my mind off of world events for a while. I might even read another book by this author after this, which I do not normally do, one right after the other.

Edit: I guess I am not going to read another by this author at this time....library is closed indefinitely and online apps I use don't have it for free. On to another storyline.

A fun, indulgent read.

I thought that this was well done, for all I tend to prefer that novels not be told in multiple voices.

Thanks to Netgalley for the advance copy of this book.

More to come later, but wow, I enjoyed this book a lot more than I expected to. I was extremely impressed with how well the three authors' writing blended together!

Edit: click here for entire review!