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A review by bargainsleuth
The Wedding Veil by Kristy Woodson Harvey
5.0
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I had really enjoyed The Grace Kelly Dress by Brenda Janowitz which told the story of one wedding dress spanning generations, and when I read the synopsis of The Wedding Veil, it sounded similar enough so I thought I’d try it out. I received an Advanced Reader’s Copy from NetGalley and Gallery Books in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
Dual timelines are often used in the fiction I read. The Wedding Veil tells the story of four women, Edith and Cornelia, whose stories are centered from WWI through the Great Depression, and the contemporary stories of Julia and her grandmother, Babs. And I have to be honest; it took me a while to get into the book because the historical timelines are told in third person and the contemporary timelines are in first person narrative. However, I eventually settled in and was able to enjoy the book immensely.
I really couldn’t decide on whose timeline I liked the best, but I can tell you that I liked Julia’s journey the least. I had a hard time wrapping my head around how she totally upended her life for ten years for her ex-fiance’ and only came to her senses after a video of him and another woman dancing a little too closely was sent to her and members of the wedding party quite literally right before she is going to walk down the aisle to marry him. It is true that she was with her ex since they were teenagers so she knew of no other way for a relationship to go, but to put up with the cheating for ten years, to give in to him countless times, to give up on her dreams and run back to him was hard to relate to. Luckily, she gains a backbone, spends some time on her “honeymoon” trying to decide what to do with her life, then puts it into action.
I thought Cornelia’s storyline was interesting. That George Vanderbilt would actually will his estate to his only daughter was quite extraordinary in an age when women weren’t really allowed to inherit property. As was all the work involved to make Biltmore self-sustaining was immense. The setting of Biltmore, an estate that I’ve heard about but haven’t done a deep dive researching, was enlightening. The description of the estate throughout the flashbacks let me imagine how Biltmore and the surrounding village of Asheville, North Carolina, were in the days of WWI and beyond.
That’s one of the reasons I like good historical fiction–it gets me interested enough in a subject that I’ll probably do a deep dive into the Biltmore estate and it’s history. And find out more about Edith and Cornelia’s lives and how much of their story is true. Some of Cornelia’s story defies logic, but is also entirely plausible after all she went through in her young life.
I had really enjoyed The Grace Kelly Dress by Brenda Janowitz which told the story of one wedding dress spanning generations, and when I read the synopsis of The Wedding Veil, it sounded similar enough so I thought I’d try it out. I received an Advanced Reader’s Copy from NetGalley and Gallery Books in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
Dual timelines are often used in the fiction I read. The Wedding Veil tells the story of four women, Edith and Cornelia, whose stories are centered from WWI through the Great Depression, and the contemporary stories of Julia and her grandmother, Babs. And I have to be honest; it took me a while to get into the book because the historical timelines are told in third person and the contemporary timelines are in first person narrative. However, I eventually settled in and was able to enjoy the book immensely.
I really couldn’t decide on whose timeline I liked the best, but I can tell you that I liked Julia’s journey the least. I had a hard time wrapping my head around how she totally upended her life for ten years for her ex-fiance’ and only came to her senses after a video of him and another woman dancing a little too closely was sent to her and members of the wedding party quite literally right before she is going to walk down the aisle to marry him. It is true that she was with her ex since they were teenagers so she knew of no other way for a relationship to go, but to put up with the cheating for ten years, to give in to him countless times, to give up on her dreams and run back to him was hard to relate to. Luckily, she gains a backbone, spends some time on her “honeymoon” trying to decide what to do with her life, then puts it into action.
I thought Cornelia’s storyline was interesting. That George Vanderbilt would actually will his estate to his only daughter was quite extraordinary in an age when women weren’t really allowed to inherit property. As was all the work involved to make Biltmore self-sustaining was immense. The setting of Biltmore, an estate that I’ve heard about but haven’t done a deep dive researching, was enlightening. The description of the estate throughout the flashbacks let me imagine how Biltmore and the surrounding village of Asheville, North Carolina, were in the days of WWI and beyond.
That’s one of the reasons I like good historical fiction–it gets me interested enough in a subject that I’ll probably do a deep dive into the Biltmore estate and it’s history. And find out more about Edith and Cornelia’s lives and how much of their story is true. Some of Cornelia’s story defies logic, but is also entirely plausible after all she went through in her young life.