Anita Abriel

The 1920s come to life before your eyes in this book, with a rich setting, and great characters. Helen and Edgar were practically made for each other, but things in life are rarely perfect, and we get to see their journey from single, independent young adults, to a married couple, to dealing with the troubles that eventually arise. I loved both their characters. They're unique but believable. The story moves along fairly smoothly overall, and really is character driven. If you enjoy historical women's fiction, you're sure to enjoy reading this!… (més)

This book gave me a bit of a difficult time with it. Our main female character, Helen Montgomery, acted like she was living in the 19th century instead of the early 20th. I had to keep reminding myself that it was 1927, and she was Main Line and ultra-rich with certain standards to uphold. But darn, she was stubborn. I kept reading, though, and finally realized that this story is loosely based on one of my favorite old-time movies with Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn. Things got better for me once I realized this.

The author does a lot of name-dropping and descriptives, and I think she put a lot of research into this novel. It really shows and makes for some very interesting reading.

The story does pick up quite a bit once you hit the 60% mark with a little altercation between Edgar and a gentleman called Louis Renault...yes, THAT Renault. And a handsome devil he was, too!

So, this book was worth the time it took to read since I enjoyed it. It's a fast read, and the price for a Kindle copy makes it a very good buy.

*ARC supplied by the publisher Lake Union Publishing - a subsidiary of Amazon, the author, and NetGalley.… (més)

I did not read the jacket of the book before I dove in and I did not realize until the end that the author wrote this novel based on her mother's life. The main characters of the story, Vera Frankel and Edith Ban, escape from the Nazis on the way to Auschwitz, literally pushed from the train by Vera's mother. The teenage girls survive with the help of a kind woman who lets them stay in her barn in exchange for work on her farm. After the war, they make their way to Naples, then briefly to New York, and then Caracas, Venezuela, where they settle for a time. Throughout the story, I kept thinking the romances were a little too unbelievably - time after time, love at first sight and gifts of expensive jewelry. I am not sure if all of that was accurate or fanciful, but I found I had to suspend my disbelief during the otherwise interesting story of Jews escaping from Europe to a new place where they were welcome.… (més)