Harper, July 2016

The blog tour train has arrived. Hello to Beatriz Williams who’s new novel, A Certain Age was released earlier this month by Harper. Here’s the blurb:

As the freedom of the Jazz Age transforms New York City, the iridescent Mrs. Theresa Marshall of Fifth Avenue – a beautiful socialite of a certain age – has done the unthinkable: she’s fallen in love with her young lover, Captain Octavian Rofrano, a handsome aviator and hero of the Great War. But though times are changing, divorce for a woman of Theresa’s wealth and social standing is out of the question.

When Theresa’s bachelor brother, Ox, decides to tie the knot with the youngest daughter of a newly wealthy inventor, Theresa enlists her lover to present the family’s diamond rose ring to pretty ingénue, Miss Sophie Fortescue – and to check into the background of this little-known family. Yet even as he uncovers a shocking secret, Octavian falls under Sophie’s spell…

Divided loyalties and dangerous revelations lead to a shocking transgression and eventually Theresa must make a choice that will change them all forever.

My verdict on A Certain Age…

It took me a couple of chapters to settle into this book but once I had, I found it to be very compelling to the point where I couldn’t stop reading. This book beautifully captures what I imagine the twenties to have been like and the imagery is so vivid. I felt like I was in New York at the beginning of the 1920’s witnessing the lives of these characters.

The plot is developed well and has a good number of twists and turns. It didn’t turn out quite the way I imagined. There is mystery surrounding this story. You know me, I love a good mystery.

The story is told from the point of view of two women; Theresa (she’s been married to a wealthy husband for a number of years,) and 19 year old Sophie.

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