Author: Fiona Davis
Narrators: Erin Bennett & Lisa Flanagan
Started: Dec. 15, 2021
Finished: Dec. 18, 2021
New York, 1913: Laura Lyons and her family live in the apartments within the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue. She raises two children in the walls of the ornate library where her husband is superintendent. Laura wants more than the life of a stay-at-home mother and returns to class to become a journalist. While working on her thesis paper, she befriends the women of the Heterodoxy Club, a "radical" group of women who feel they should be able to be and act as they see fit despite social expectations.
New York, 1993: Sadie Donovan, granddaughter of Laura Lyons, works at the New York Public Library as acting curator of the Berg Collection. The collection will display the personal belongings of her grandmother, a famed feminist journalist.
During both timelines, there are strange thefts at the library. Priceless books go missing from a locked area and no one can figure out how the thief is getting in and out of the building without being seen. The key to solving the old mystery is in solving the new.
I loved the use of two narrators - it gave each character's story a clear identity and made it easier to determine whose storyline was being explained. Each narrator did a beautiful job in representing the emotions of their given storylines.
I have previously read The Chelsea Girls by this author and I don't know what took me so long to read another. I loved this book from beginning to end. I found the characters to be relatable and I was interested in learning how their stories concluded. Fiona Davis is thorough in her research and is a master of the dual timeline found in almost all historical fiction.