Prose (Story): Set in alternating timelines, Fiona Davis's latest work of historical fiction takes us to 1919 New York City ... where the young artists' model and muse Angelica, whose face and figure can be found all over New York and the world, finds herself -- mere months after her mother's death from the Spanish flu - embroiled in a murderous scandal that sends her running, despite her innocence, until she accidentally lands a job as a private secretary to the eccentric and demanding Helen Frick, daughter of world-famous (and infamous) industrialist art collector Henry Clay Frick, where she immediately becomes entrenched in the family's world and drama ... while, in 1966, a young model from the UK, Veronica, lands her first big gig via an NYC photo shoot for Vogue magazine - at the world-renowned Frick Museum, no less - where she and a handsome intern named Joshua work to solve a mysterious scavenger hunt that Veronica stumbles across; one that may end a whole lot of pain and scandal, as well as solve a decades-old murder.
Don's (Review): I believe I currently have all of Fiona Davis's novels on my Kindle, but this is only my second read of hers, after enjoying Chelsea Girls a few years ago. My love for New York City, combined with Davis's amazing way of weaving hisorical fact and fiction to the point where you don't know which is which, to tell a compelling story - normally centered around a well-known NYC institution - makes for especially compelling reading here, as Angelica (now using her real name, Lillian, to avoid the police and scandal) shows us, through her eyes, both the brilliance of the Frick family home - already designated as an art museum to be donated to the city - as well as the eccentricities of its occupants, much of it brought on by the family's own dark past ... while in 1966 things don't go much better for the naive Veronica and the photo shoot, even before a giant blizzard traps her and Joshua in the Frick Museum, where the scavenger hunt clues lead Veronica to a tough decision of her own. The plotting here is expert, effortlessly switching between timelines and characters as tension builds in both, and even while secondary characters are really well-drawn, it's clearly Lillian and Veronica's show from page one (though wow, does Helen Frick often leap - full of piss and vinegar - off the page, as well), each young woman trying to bounce back from a difficult past to find her fulfilling future. I was grateful for the only slight parlays into romance; for me, some of the best moments of the book were grabbing up my phone to look up image after image of a statue or painting from the Frick, as it came up in the narrative, and I also loved how the book kept the mystery plots strong in both eras ... right up until it connected them, bringing us full circle to a genuinely suspenseful, ties-up-all-loose threads ending that left this reader satisfied. Author Davis's Afterward, discussing what was real and what was fiction and how she brought them all together for the novel, was easily as entertaining as the book itself - as was the online tour I took of the Frick's treasures, currently in a temporary home nearby while the mansion undergoes renovation, after closing the book. As an adult, I have grown to appreciate history - a subject I loathed (and was horrible at) in school; had Ms. Davis been writing back then, it might have been an entirely different story for me. 4/5 stars
NOTE: I received a free ARC of this title from NetGalley and the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.
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