Members of the Vise Library were selected to review The Forgotten Room. We received a copy of this book for an honest review.
About the book:
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.
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.
When I found out that three of my favorite authors were writing a book together, I was totally on board. The Forgotten Room is a great time period book that spans three generations of women (Olive from the 1890s, Lucy from the 1920s & Kate during WWII) that are somehow all connected (sorry, not telling). All three women are pushing the boundaries for women during their time and they also find that they have an unexplained deep connection with someone that they meet in the book. Each women tries to understand some aspect of their past and to set right the wrongs of that past along the way (some characters succeed while others do not). This is a story of regrets (sometimes having to live with them, sometimes undoing those regrets and sometimes being the cause of them) and how choices set certain events in motion. This book is heartbreaking at times, but it also gives hope for the future. Trust in other people and the trust the women have inside themselves is an important aspect of this book as well. I found that after reading this story I was devastated for certain characters but felt elated for other characters. You will not be able to walk away from this book unaffected. However, you realize that because certain unpleasant outcomes happen that there are possibilities for even better experiences. Even though there are three distinct characters, the three authors write this book in such a way that it is a seamless transition between each story (which author wrote which character???). You will become invested in each of these characters and try to guess the mystery surrounding the three women. I sincerely hope these three authors team up again, because this was a fantastic story. This book will be available for checkout from our Popular Collection when it is released in January. Make sure you give it a chance and enjoy!
