Author: Kate Quinn
Genre: Historical Fiction, Mystery and Suspense
Publisher: William Morrow
Book Release Date: 2024
Pages: 430
Source: Netgalley/Publisher in exchange for an honest review.
Synopsis: The New York Times bestselling author of The Diamond Eye and The Rose Code returns with a haunting and powerful work of historical fiction, a story of female friendships and secrets in a Washington, DC, boardinghouse during the McCarthy era.
In this gripping women’s fiction novel, everyone keeps to themselves at Briarwood House, a down-at-the-heels all-female boardinghouse in the heart of the nation’s capital where secrets hide behind white picket fences. But when the lovely, mysterious widow Grace March moves into the attic room, she draws her oddball collection of neighbors into unlikely friendship: poised English beauty Fliss, whose facade of perfect wife and mother covers gaping inner wounds; policeman’s daughter Nora, who finds herself entangled with a shadowy gangster; frustrated baseball star Beatrice, whose career has come to an end along with the women’s baseball league of WWII; and poisonous, gung-ho Arlene, who has thrown herself into McCarthy’s Red Scare.
Grace’s weekly attic-room dinner parties and window-brewed sun tea become a healing balm on all their lives, but she hides a terrible secret of her own. When a shocking act of violence tears the house apart, the Briar Club women must decide once and for all: who is the true enemy in their midst?
Capturing the paranoia of the McCarthy era and evoking the changing roles for women in postwar America, The Briar Club is an intimate and thrilling historical mystery of secrets and loyalty put to the test.
My Review: One day in 1950, a mysterious woman named Grace March arrives at Briarwood House, a female boardinghouse in Washington D.C. When she settles in, she has weekly dinners with the other residents of the boardinghouse. Grace slowly makes friends with them while she keeps a secret of her own. One day, a murder happens at Briarwood House. Who has committed the murder? Also, what secrets do these women hold?
The premise to the story sounded very interesting. I wanted to learn about the women of the boardinghouse and connect with them. I wanted them to come alive. However, I think they were not dynamic or interesting characters. They never seemed to come alive on the page. Each of the characters seemed to be the same, and I had a hard time telling them apart. Most of them were very forgettable. I did not care about the struggles that they went through. The character who was the most fascinating was Grace, who was the central character in the story. I loved how Grace helped the other residents in the boardinghouse. Therefore, I found her story to be the most compelling. I just wished that I found the other characters just as fascinating. Unfortunately, I did not, and I was very disappointed.
Overall, this book is about friendship, healing, and hope. I found all of the characters, except for Grace to be flat. There also was not much plot in the story because it was character-driven. Because I did not care about the characters, the story seemed very long and tedious. The most interesting scenes were those that revolved around the murder. However, the reveal and the whodunnit was very silly, and I was unsatisfied with it. I also thought the recipes that were included in this book to be very random and jarring, which distracted me from the novel. The recipes also did not appeal to me because they seemed too complicated to make. I did like the setting and Mrs. Quinn’s writing style. Therefore, I was very disappointed with The Briar Club because I’m a huge fan of the author. The Briar Club was definitely not her best work. It had an interesting premise, but sadly Mrs. Quinn just could not pull it off. However, If you are interested in books set during the Cold War, you might be interested in this book. I recommend this for fans of The Lunar Housewife, A Most Clever Girl, and The Chelsea Girls! However, if you are new to Kate Quinn, I advise you to skip it and read The Alice Network instead!
Rating: 2 ½ out of 5 stars
Comments
Post a Comment