Take a photo of a barcode or cover
cait_s 's review for:
The Forgotten Room
by Lauren Willig, Karen White, Beatriz Williams
I received a free copy of this ARC from Penguin First Reads in exchange for an honest review.
This book takes place across three generations--the 1890s, 1920s, and 1940s. The stories are told in an interweaving fashion, skipping from one to the other. I can't describe them too much without giving things away, but each generation's stories are strikingly similar.
The parallels, in fact, were where this book failed to connect with me. The conclusion of the older two sections is forgone once you can tell the shape of the story--how the end happens is unknown until you read to the end of the book, but the end itself is obvious. And the end of the final section is pretty easy to guess, too, a sort of redemption of the struggles before.
This makes the secrets each protagonist is investigating lose their punch, and the sameness of the story lines blurs together. There's also a remarkable amount of coincidences to make the plot work--one after the other, and a single one would make the whole thing fall through. Each story takes place in the same house, though it changes drastically over time. The house itself is almost another character, looming large in each character's life.
If you're willing to forgive sentimentality, an inevitable plot (which is fairly standard in romance, anyway), and a pile of coincidences, then this book is a sweet, if unremarkable romance.
This book takes place across three generations--the 1890s, 1920s, and 1940s. The stories are told in an interweaving fashion, skipping from one to the other. I can't describe them too much without giving things away, but each generation's stories are strikingly similar.
The parallels, in fact, were where this book failed to connect with me. The conclusion of the older two sections is forgone once you can tell the shape of the story--how the end happens is unknown until you read to the end of the book, but the end itself is obvious. And the end of the final section is pretty easy to guess, too, a sort of redemption of the struggles before.
This makes the secrets each protagonist is investigating lose their punch, and the sameness of the story lines blurs together. There's also a remarkable amount of coincidences to make the plot work--one after the other, and a single one would make the whole thing fall through. Each story takes place in the same house, though it changes drastically over time. The house itself is almost another character, looming large in each character's life.
If you're willing to forgive sentimentality, an inevitable plot (which is fairly standard in romance, anyway), and a pile of coincidences, then this book is a sweet, if unremarkable romance.