This stunning novel opens up in 1899 with a murder. Janie Van Duyvil and her cousin Anne Newton have just discovered Janie's brother Bay with a knife sticking out of his chest inside the folly at his house during the Twelfth Night party he and his wife Annabelle were having. Janie sees Annabelle in the river. When help is brought back, Annabelle has disappeared into the river and the police doubt that Janie saw her to begin with.
The book travels back in time to when Annabelle and Bay met in London in 1894 when Annabelle was Georgina Evans, an actress at a cheap theater. Sir Hugo, a notorious rakehell, invites Kitty and Annabelle to dinner with his friend Bay, Georgina balks and Bay takes her outside and puts her in a cab. He later comes back to the theater to apologize and thus begins a friendship that turns into something more.
Janie is the quiet daughter of a formidable towering matron of society, whose mother is obsessed with the family name and its place in society. Anne "stole" the man she was to marry, not that Janie minded all that much. She works at the Girls Club doing charity work helping young women to her mother's consternation. The papers are saying that Bay killed Annabelle and then himself because she was carrying on with the architect of the house they had just had built.
Janie becomes determined to find out the truth and when a reporter, James Burke, finds his way into the house and she has words with him, she decides to go to him and make a bargain with Burke for them to be honest with each other and share information and he could print anything he found as long as it was the truth. Of course, the two of them are attracted to each other.
The characters are interesting such as Anne who deals in triple entendre and does daily battle with Mrs. Van Duyvil, her aunt who took her in and never let her forget it and Georgina who is scrappy and takes nothing from no one. This book has more twists and turns than a mountain road and it opens up on an exciting note that catches you right away and never lets you go. The pages fly so fast your fingers will have scorch marks.
Link to Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/English-Wife-Novel-Lauren-Willig-ebook/dp/B072TY6MS6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1516201448&sr=8-1&keywords=the+english+wife
No comments:
Post a Comment