A- #BookReview: The Ivory City by Emily Bain Murphy

The Ivory City by Emily Bain Murphy
Format: ebook
Source: borrowed from Amazon Kindle Unlimited
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery, historical romance
Pages: 352
Published by Union Square & Co. on November 4, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

The St. Louis World’s Fair, 1904: A miniature city of palaces and pavilions that becomes a backdrop for romance, betrayal—and murder.      Cousins Grace and Lillie have been best friends since birth, despite Grace’s vastly inferior social status ever since her mother married for love instead of wealth. When Lillie invites Grace to the biggest event of the century—the legendary World’s Fair, also known as “The Ivory City”—Grace hopes her fortunes might be about to change.       But when a member of their party is brutally killed at the fair, and suspicion falls on Lillie’s brother Oliver, Grace must prove Oliver’s innocence before her beloved cousins’ family is ruined forever. Along the way, she'll discover that the city’s wealthy elite—including Oliver’s handsome but irritable friend Theodore—aren’t quite who they appear to be. And amidst the glitz, glamor, and magic of the Ivory City lurks a danger that just may claim her life.

My Review:

Grace Covington has grown up pinned to the fringes of the high society that should have been hers by birth – or would have been if her mother hadn’t chosen to marry for love instead of wealth and status.

The only thing that has kept her on that fringe has been the love of her cousins Lillie and Oliver. In spite of their mother’s constant attempts to push Grace, forcibly if necessary, out of their lives, Oliver and especially Lillie have been equally determined to keep Grace close.

But all their lives are on the cusp of change – even if not the change any of them believed it would be. In their early 20s, on the threshold of adulthood, it’s time for them to go their separate ways – even if Lillie and Oliver aren’t willing to see it. Grace is tired of being reminded at every turn that she does not belong in high society, is unwilling to continue to tolerate the sly cuts, denigrating comments, and scandalous innuendos that beset her at every turn. And recognizes that its time for her to forge her own path and it can’t be the same as Lillie’s no matter how much they have been sisters of the heart.

Grace intends that the opening weeks of the “Ivory City”, the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, will be her final hurrah among high society. It’s supposed to be last flutter of bright glitter before she literally kisses her beloved cousins goodbye – and brightens her dour Aunt Clove’s whole entire life into that sad bargain.

But fate intervenes, along with utter disaster, when Oliver falls in love with an actress, a woman his mother will never allow to sully their family – no matter what she has to do to prevent it. But when the woman drops dead of poison in the midst of a society gala, it’s Oliver who is arrested and sent to jail to await trial because he handed her the fatal glass.

Even as he’s tried – and found guilty – in the gossip rags and the yellow press, Grace and Lillie are determined not to let that verdict be pronounced in an actual courtroom. They are certain that Oliver couldn’t possibly have done it. But someone certainly did, and they’re willing to dig into whoever and whatever it takes to find out the terrible truth. Even if it “ruins” them both in the process.

Escape Rating A-: The story belongs to Grace Covington, not just because she turns out to be the person who makes things happen, but because she’s the character who grows and changes and makes decisions about her life and future. But what makes this story special, what gives it its shine and sparkle, is its setting at the 1904 World’s Fair. Because Grace isn’t just telling a story about her life and her choices and her decision to investigate crime, but she’s telling it and working on it in this fantastic setting that has briefly but brilliantly (in more ways than one) made the unreal magically real.

And doesn’t shy away from some of the really awful parts of that reality – even as it expresses Grace’s shock and awe and disgust and horror in ways that fit her time and place and circumstances and rather than ours.

So the story works on multiple levels that intertwine and support each other and cast both shine and shade on each other at the same time.

Grace’s own part of the story is one that has been told before, although it’s certainly done well in The Ivory City, as does Grace herself. But still, she’s the ‘poor’ relation of a rich family, barely tolerated by their society because her cousins refuse to abandon her, her snobby aunt is a horror and her cousins’ friends all look down on her and aren’t at all shy or even polite in letting her know they think she’s beneath them. Then she rises to the occasion by investigating the murder that her cousin has been accused of and exposes the truth.

It’s a good story, it’s well done here, but it’s not new in and of itself. The Saffron Everleigh series starting with A Botanist’s Guide to Parties and Poisons tells a similar kind of mystery, also historical, in a different time and place but with a setup very much like this one. Minus, of course, the World’s Fair which is kind of the point.

The way that this microcosm of the world that the powers that be are presenting it as being – even though it reflects all their prejudices and hides a lot of darkness under its bright lights, provides a world within a world where everyone is briefly cheek-by-jowl, where there is a lot of mingling of people and classes, where all the things that make a community function are crammed into a hothouse environment and where people can see beyond the boundaries of their usual settings and opportunities – if they’re willing to.

Which is what allows Grace to live somewhat independently, mix with people from other classes, meet and fall in love with a man who would otherwise be out of her reach, become a newspaper reporter and investigate and more importantly uncover a scandal among people who are willing to shore up their social position through murder.

And it all happens fast because she doesn’t have to travel around, the Fair has compacted the world into a small and tempestuous space. In the end, the story, like the fair itself, encompasses the whole world and not just a tiny piece of it.

It’s probably impossible to read the title or the blurb of The Ivory City without being reminded of The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson. And they certainly do share their World’s Fair settings. But just as it’s not the same World’s Fair, it’s also not the same kind of story. Not just because Devil is nonfiction – even though it reads as compulsively as fiction – while Ivory City is fiction through and through. But also because Devil is a story centered around its male characters, and their unplanned rivalry, while Ivory City is focused on its female characters, their newfound agency, their cooperation and their rivalries, and especially their triumphs.

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