Review: Paris Time Capsule by Ella Carey + Giveaway

paris time capsule by ella careyFormat read: ebook provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genre: historical fiction, women’s fiction
Length: 290 pages
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Date Released: May 26, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Book Depository

New York–based photographer Cat Jordan is ready to begin a new life with her successful, button-down boyfriend. But when she learns that she’s inherited the estate of a complete stranger—a woman named Isabelle de Florian—her life is turned upside down.

Cat arrives in Paris to find that she is now the owner of a perfectly preserved Belle Époque apartment in the ninth arrondissement, and that the Frenchwoman’s family knew nothing about this secret estate. Amid these strange developments, Cat is left with burning questions: Who was Isabelle de Florian? And why did she leave the inheritance to Cat instead of her own family?

As Cat travels France in search of answers, she feels her grasp on her New York life starting to slip. With long-buried secrets coming to light and an attraction to Isabelle de Florian’s grandson growing too intense to ignore, Cat will have to decide what to let go of, and what to claim as her own.

My Review:

The premise of this story is fascinating and even more amazing because it is true.

Just as in the story, in 2010 the Paris apartment of Madame Marthe de Florian was discovered completely untouched since World War II. Marthe de Florian had been a famous, or infamous, courtesan during France’s Belle Epoque, a period of change that encompassed the final decades of the 19th century, including the period in America known as “the Gay Nineties”, and ended with a bang at the outbreak of World War I. Marthe de Florian was one of the queens of that tumultuous era, and entertained artists and especially statesmen who kept her in grand style.

But she died in 1939, and her apartment was inherited by her son and granddaughter. And that’s where things get interesting, because sometime during the war Marthe’s granddaughter closed up the apartment and left Paris. She never returned to her grandmother’s apartment, but kept it untouched until her death in 2010.

Marthe de Florian by Giovanni Boldini (1888)
Marthe de Florian by Giovanni Boldini (1888)

When the apartment was opened, it was discovered to be a treasure-trove of life in Paris during the Belle Epoque, including a undiscovered masterpiece by Giovanni Boldini, a painting of Marthe de Florian in her gorgeous prime.

The apartment was called the “Parisian Time Capsule” in many articles about its discovery and its secrets.

The author of the novel Paris Time Capsule has taken the story of the discovery and woven a fantastic tapestry of a story, as the young American woman who inherits the apartment from her grandmother’s best friend undertakes a journey to discover why this unlooked for legacy has come to her, and not gone to the descendants of the owner. As Cat Jordan follows the trail of clues to her grandmother’s past, she uncovers secrets that have remained hidden since the dark days of Paris’ occupation in World War II. And through her journey, she finally learns to listen to the secrets of her own heart.

Escape Rating B+: I had a love/hate relationships with this book. I absolutely adored the premise, and would have whether it was true or not.

In fiction, Cat’s free-spirited grandmother Virginia was the best friend of Isabelle de Florian, Marthe’s fictional granddaughter. But whatever happened in Paris between Isabelle and Virginia, Virginia never spoke about it after the war. Cat has no idea who Isabelle de Florian was, or why she left this dusty jewel-box of an apartment to Virginia’s descendants rather than her own.

Cat’s first surprise is her inheritance. Cat has always had a love of period designs and period clothing, and the apartment is an absolute treat for her. She just can’t understand how it came to her in the first place. Especially since the second person she meets on her Parisian trip is the grandson of Isabelle de Florian. Neither Loic Archer nor his mother Sylvie had any idea that the apartment existed, but they are more than willing to abide by their matriarch’s wishes and let Cat have it.

But they share with Cat a desire to understand what happened, and why Isabelle never told them of the apartment or its secrets, not in the long years when money was very tight and the sale of the apartment would have saved Isabelle and Sylvie from poverty. Something doesn’t make sense to any of them.

And this is where we get into the part that drove me absolutely bonkers. It is to be expected in a story that is set up as we have seen so far that Loic and Cat would fall in love as they search for Isabelle de Florian’s secrets. It is even not an unexpected part of this journey that Cat would discover that the life she has been leading in New York, including her brand-new fiance, would turn out not to be right for her after all.

But what drove me absolutely nuts was the way that this part of the story was handled. Or perhaps a better description would be the way that the character of Cat’s fiance Christian was portrayed. It is obvious from our first meeting with Christian that he isn’t the right person for Cat. Not because Loic is better (he hasn’t even entered the picture yet) or even because Christian and his family are extremely wealthy and Cat is scraping by in a job she hates.

No, the problem is that Christian takes every opportunity to subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) undermine Cat, her opinions, her decisions, her tastes and her ideas. He doesn’t want the Cat who actually exists, he wants a doll that he can dress up and parade around who will never challenge him because she is so grateful for his largesse. When he wants Cat’s attention, he tracks her down by GPS. When she wants his attention, he’s always busy working.

As the reader, I felt bludgeoned by just how wrong Christian is for Cat. It felt as if the author was trying to draw a parallel between the way that Christian treated Cat and the way that Marthe was kept by her gentlemen admirers. I started to feel a bit beaten about the head with the all-too-obviously drawn parallel, but it isn’t until well after Loic starts asking her questions that Cat’s self-talk finally begins to see the clue-by-four that I’ve been hit with from the first scene. It’s not just that denial isn’t just a river in Egypt, it’s that Cat doesn’t even see that she’s paddling upstream and losing ground with every stroke.

Outside of the appalling business of Cat’s horrid choice in fiance, the rest of the story is an absolute gem. I sincerely mean that. Cat’s journey, with all of its twists and turns and dead ends, is a voyage back to the dark days at the beginning of the war. When Cat finally discovers the truth about the apartment and its seemingly unusual disposition, it all makes sense. A very sad and heartbreaking sense.

We know that Cat is the rightful heir after all, and we’re glad for her and sad for the reasons why it had to be.

And thank goodness that Cat finally gets a clue about her own love life before it is too late.

~~~~~~ GIVEAWAY ~~~~~~

I am giving away a paperback copy of Paris Time Capsule to one lucky U.S./Canadian commenter:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

TLC
This post is part of a TLC book tour. Click on the logo for more reviews and features.
***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: Miramont’s Ghost by Elizabeth Hall + Giveaway

miramont's ghost by elizabeth hallFormat read: ebook provided by the publisher
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genre: gothic mystery, historical fiction
Length: 336 pages
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Date Released: February 1, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Book Depository

Miramont Castle, built in 1897 and mysteriously abandoned three years later, is home to many secrets. Only one person knows the truth: Adrienne Beauvier, granddaughter of the Comte de Challembelles and cousin to the man who built the castle.

Clairvoyant from the time she could talk, Adrienne’s visions show her the secrets of those around her. When her visions begin to reveal dark mysteries of her own aristocratic French family, Adrienne is confronted by her formidable Aunt Marie, who is determined to keep the young woman silent at any cost. Marie wrenches Adrienne from her home in France and takes her to America, to Miramont Castle, where she keeps the girl isolated and imprisoned. Surrounded by eerie premonitions, Adrienne is locked in a life-or-death struggle to learn the truth and escape her torment.

Reminiscent of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, this hauntingly atmospheric tale is inspired by historical research into the real-life Miramont Castle in Manitou Springs, Colorado.

My Review:

This is a compelling story, in an insidious, creepy, scary sort of way. I finished at 3 am with the shivers, so be warned.

I will say that Adrienne’s story gets under your skin. Well, at least my skin. On the one hand, I felt incredibly sorry for her. Her brief and heartbreaking life consists of one loss after another. And even though she is clairvoyant, and can see what is coming before it happens, she isn’t able to prevent a single thing that is done to her.

Yes, everything that happens is done to her, not by her. By the end, the only agency she has in her life is the ability and desire to end it. This is a very tragic story, but much more in the creepy than the weepy vein.

Adrienne starts out the story as a child in a noble family in rural France in the late 1800s. In her small family, her grandfather adores her, her mother neglects her, and her aunt hates her with a passion beyond reason.

Adrienne has visions. She sees the past, the far away present, and sometimes the future. None of it does her any good. Her grandmother had the same sight, and it caused her nothing but trouble. Even worse, it caused the servants and the townspeople to gossip and shun her.

Adrienne starts seeing activities in the village that she can’t possibly have witnessed, and it all goes downhill. Her only protectors are her grandfather and her governess. Time takes away her beloved grandfather, and her aunt’s machinations remove her governess.

It’s impossible to overemphasize how much her aunt hates her. When Adrienne is a young woman, she falls in love. Aunt Marie ensures that her beloved is sent to South America, and then that her governess is removed. As a finaly blow, Marie carries her off to Colorado with her mother’s neglectful consent. As soon as they arrive in New York, Marie sends a message back home that Adrienne died at sea.

It is only then that Adrienne’s nightmare really begins.

Escape Rating B: Once I got involved with Adrienne’s story, I found this thing impossible to put down. At the same time, I wanted to shake Adrienne until she stopped being so damn passive and took some charge of her own life.

Considering the time and the circumstance, Adrienne’s complete passivity to her fate was probably historically accurate. She was an upper-class young woman of 16 or 17, with an education in the arts and no practical knowledge whatsoever. Her aunt dragged her off to a country where she did not speak the language and made sure she had no money. She was also kept a virtual prisoner.

Why? That’s a good question. It is possible that her aunt silenced and imprisoned her to prevent her from speaking out about her cousin Julien’s (Marie’s son) sexual abuse of her when she was a child. It’s possible that it was punishment for making the family she subject of gossip yet again, as she repeated her grandmother’s talent for true visions.

As her cousin Julien has become a Catholic priest, the accusation of child molestation would be particularly problematic, especially since the accusation has been repeated in parishes that he has served in North America. While a young woman accusing a pillar of the community of sexual abuse that happened 5 or 6 years previously might not be believed, as fuel added to a current fire, it would have caused a lot more heat to be aimed at the priest.

But we don’t actually know for certain. The speech that the villain makes near the end, explaining it all to the poor victim may be melodramatic but does serve to wrap things up for the audience. We don’t get that here. We only see what Adrienne sees, and only know what she knows. Unfortunately for the audience, the one thing that Marie is excellent at is keeping her thoughts and feelings to herself, even as she commits acts that are increasingly evil.

Miramont Castle
Miramont Castle

The author has woven her ghost story into the cracks in the history of a real place, Miramont Castle near Colorado Springs. Jean Baptiste Francolon built the castle, and was forced out of town to escape a lynch mob. He was even poisoned with his own chalice while serving Mass.

In this story, the author tells the history of the ghost who haunts the castle. Or rather, she lets the ghost tell her own story as she decides whether, a century after the events that ended her life, she has finally achieved enough detachment to let go.

After everything that happened to her, I’m not sure a single century would be enough!

~~~~~~GIVEAWAY~~~~~~

Elizabeth and Lake Union Publishing are giving away one copy of Miramont’s Ghost to one lucky U.S. or Canadian winner.
a Rafflecopter giveaway

TLC
This post is part of a TLC book tour. Click on the logo for more reviews.
***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: The Moonlight Palace by Liz Rosenberg + Giveaway

moonlight palace by liz rosenbergFormat read: ebook provided by NetGalley
Formats available: ebook, paperback, audiobook
Genre: Historical fiction
Length: 176 pages
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Date Released: October 1, 2014
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Book Depository

Agnes Hussein, descendant of the last sultan of Singapore and the last surviving member of her immediate family, has grown up among her eccentric relatives in the crumbling Kampong Glam palace, a once-opulent relic given to her family in exchange for handing over Singapore to the British.

Now Agnes is seventeen and her family has fallen into genteel poverty, surviving on her grandfather’s pension and the meager income they receive from a varied cast of boarders. As outside forces conspire to steal the palace out from under them, Agnes struggles to save her family and finds bravery, love, and loyalty in the most unexpected places. The Moonlight Palace is a coming-of-age tale rich with historical detail and unforgettable characters set against the backdrop of dazzling 1920s Singapore.

My Review:

Kampong Glam Palace in 2001
Kampong Glam Palace in 2001

There really is a Moonlight Palace. Or rather, the setting of this story really does exist, and some of the history that forms the background for this coming-of-age story really happened.

As the Kampong Glam Palace falls apart before her eyes (and under her feet and above her head), young Agnes Hussein negotiates both the shoals of her upcoming adulthood and the rocks of possible rehabilitation (or destruction) for the grand old wreck of a house that she calls home.

Agnes is a descendant of both the last sultan of Singapore and the granddaughter of a decorated British army officer. Her life has a foot in both worlds in the melting pot that is Singapore in the 1920s. As she says, she is half-Chinese, one-quarter Muslim, and one-quarter English. She’s also the only member of her extremely eccentric family with at least one foot in the 20th century.

She’s seventeen, and it seems like responsibility for her family’s (and the palace’s) survival rests on her inexperienced shoulders.

The Kampong Glam Palace is absolutely one of the members of the family. It is falling apart around them, and her British grandfather’s pension, along with rent from equally eccentric boarders, keeps body, soul and house barely together.

Agnes uses a bathtub with boards over it as a desk; only two of the many bathrooms still work and have intact floors and ceilings. Her current “office” is one of the non-functional ones. Chairs crumble, the roof leaks.

When “British Grandfather” dies, and his pension with him, it is the last in a string of bad luck that finally forces Agnes to see her life for what it is, and makes her realize that her future will not be lived in the beautiful but decaying palace that her family calls home.

It is up to her to find a new path that saves them and saves the Moonlight Palace, even if those futures are separate from one other.

Escape Rating B: This is a short book, and that’s just right. It’s both a family story, and a coming-of-age. It also evokes the exotic melting pot atmosphere of Singapore as well as that of a time when the world was irrevocably changing from the slow past to the fast-moving future.

Agnes makes a terrific point of view character. She loves her family and their eccentricities, and wants nothing more than to continue living in the beautiful but decrepit palace that has been her family’s home for so long.

At the same time, she is a child of the 20th century, and wants to do things for herself that are not traditional; like work and fall in love with someone her family might not approve of. It takes a big shock for her to wake up and realize not just that she can’t have everything she wants, but that she must be the one who figures out how to save everyone and everything she loves.

This is a story filled with marvelous, and marvelously eccentric, characters. Not just the crumbling palace, but also Agnes’ multi-generational family, built with both family of blood and family of choice into a slightly crazy whole.

It’s Agnes’ love, and her loyalty, that finds the way forward. Following her as she figures things out and explores her world makes a terrific story.

~~~~~~GIVEAWAY~~~~~~

Liz is kindly giving away one copy of The Moonlight Palace (US/Canada only)! To enter, use the Rafflecopter below.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

TLC
This post is part of a TLC book tour. Click on the logo for more reviews.
***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: The Virtues of Oxygen by Susan Schoenberger + Giveaway

The Virtues of Oxygen by Susan SchoenbergerFormat read: ebook provided by NetGalley
Formats available: ebook, paperback, audiobook
Genre: Women’s fiction
Length: 243 pages
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Date Released: July 22, 2014
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Book Depository

Holly is a young widow with two kids living in a ramshackle house in the same small town where she grew up wealthy. Now barely able to make ends meet editing the town’s struggling newspaper, she manages to stay afloat with help from her family. Then her mother suffers a stroke, and Holly’s world begins to completely fall apart.

Vivian has lived an extraordinary life, despite the fact that she has been confined to an iron lung since contracting polio as a child. Her condition means she requires constant monitoring, and the close-knit community joins together to give her care and help keep her alive. As their town buckles under the weight of the Great Recession, Holly and Vivian, two very different women both touched by pain, forge an unlikely alliance that may just offer each an unexpected salvation.

My Review:

The Virtues of Oxygen is the story of two women (and a town) who are all having difficulty with something that is critical to survival.

It’s not that Holly started out life somewhere in the upper-middle class and feels deprived because her standard of living has steadily fallen throughout her adult life–it’s that she’s 42, widowed young, with two sons and a job in a dying industry (journalism) in a small town that has been losing economic ground for decades.

She works hard and she does her best, but she’s going to lose her house. And her little weekly newspaper is about to fold, taking her job with it.

Then her mother has a severe stroke and she and her siblings have to face even more bitter truths. Their mother survived, but she will never get better. The woman they knew is gone.

And everything that their parents saved in their life together will have to go to taking care of the body that no longer houses their mother.

Holly says that money is like oxygen, and she just doesn’t have enough. but Holly’s friend Vivian really doesn’t have enough actual oxygen. Ever.

230px-Iron_lung_CDCVivian is 65, and she contracted polio when she was 6–three years before the Salk vaccine. For the past 59 years, Vivian has lived her entire life in an iron lung. She can’t breathe without it’s constant assistance.

She has managed to make a life for herself. Computers and the internet opened up a vast array of outside contacts for her. She invested her money wisely, (she’s very good at it) and has mostly done ok by financial standards.

But she is tired of everything. As her series of podcasts reveals, she has lived her life as best as she could, but she has reached enough. The problem is that someone is, of necessity, always taking care of her, and ensuring that her life-giving machines never lose power.

When Holly finally runs out of choices, Vivian takes her and her boys into her home. Holly’s family gives Vivian one last chance to experience life in a busy and happy household. Holly’s family gives her purpose.

They also give her one last chance to pass the benefits of her life, hopefully without the disadvantages, to a friend she cares for, and the town that has cared for her.

Escape Rating B+: The Virtues of Oxygen is a story that builds slowly, but involves the reader with all the aspects of both of its protagonists lives. This is not a story where dramatic action would be appropriate, instead it weaves its spell by deepening the reader’s understanding of the difficulties faced by all the characters.

Vivian is simply an awesome character. From the first of her “unaired podcasts” Vivian’s personality roars off the page. Her experience is so much broader than the horizons of her iron-lung bound life might have been. For someone who starts out extraordinarily unlucky, she makes the absolute most of what she has. Until she exhausts herself in a way that is as understandable as possible in circumstances that none of us can compare to.

Vivian has managed to make herself the personal and economic center of little Bertram Corners, binding the town together in caring for her in a way that helps the town as much as it assists her. It’s obvious from the story that it took Vivian a while, but she finally figured out how to give back to her caregivers and her community in a really big way.

Holly’s life keeps going from bad to worse, and she keeps on putting one foot in front of the other, but she’s just not able to dig out of the hole she’s in. Because she doesn’t have any reserves, she can’t manage to help herself make money. Everything that comes in is eaten up by daily life; the mortgage, utilities, keeping both sons clothed and fed, trying to keep their lives from being a complete drag as the house gets more dilapidated.

Her life has never recovered from the absurdly young death of her husband. No one expects to die in their early 30’s, with so much of their promise unfulfilled.

The town is slowly dying, and into this economic bust Vivian brings a storefront cash-for-gold store. The presence of the store, and it’s city-wise manager Racine brings a boost to the downtown area, and possibly even a boost to Holly’s life. She just can’t figure out what his game is or whether he has one.

For a character who changes so much from the beginning of the story to the end, we don’t see as much of Racine’s perspective as might have been helpful. The Virtues of Oxygen is totally Vivian’s and Holly’s stories.

~~~~~~GIVEAWAY~~~~~~

Susan is graciously giving away a paperback copy of The Virtues of Oxygen to one lucky U.S commenter:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

TLC
This post is part of a TLC book tour. Click on the logo for more reviews.
***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.