The Briar Club ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Briar Club by Kate Quinn


G👀dreads

A haunting and powerful story of female friendships and secrets in a Washington, D.C. boardinghouse during the McCarthy era.

Washington, D.C., 1950. Everyone keeps to themselves at Briarwood House, a down-at-the-heels all-female boardinghouse in the heart of the nation’s capital, where secrets hide behind white picket fences. But when the lovely, mysterious widow Grace March moves into the attic, she draws her oddball collection of neighbors into unlikely friendship: poised English beauty Fliss whose facade of perfect wife and mother covers gaping inner wounds; police officer’s daughter Nora, who is entangled with a shadowy gangster; frustrated baseball star Bea, whose career has ended along with the women’s baseball league of WWII; and poisonous, gung-ho Arlene, who has thrown herself into McCarthy’s Red Scare.

Grace’s weekly attic-room dinner parties and window-brewed sun tea become a healing balm on all their lives, but she hides a terrible secret of her own. When a shocking act of violence tears apart the house, the Briar Club women must decide once and for all: Who is the true enemy in their midst?

Genre: Historical Fiction, Mystery, Thriller
I wouldn't have tagged it as a thriller.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Its set in the 1950s and follows an eclectic group of women, all of whom live in the same boarding house, have different backgrounds and goals. They band together for a once-a-week supper club they dub The Briar Club. It includes a murder mystery. It's more about the backgrounds of each boarder than it is about their supper club. There are several recipes included. I listened to the audiobook and it IS weird to listen to recipes. I imagine it's better when they are printed on pages in the book. Take a glance and turn the page, bookmark for later. Pete's Swedish Meatballs sounded interesting and is actually how the dinner club got started. Pete is the 12 year old son of the owner of the boarding house and his Dad deserted the family. He tells one of the boarders that he misses the times that his Dad would make Swedish Meatballs so she decided they should make them and that's how the supper club became a thing. We won't talk about Arlene's Candle Salad. Naughty girls! 

It casually mentions it's during the McCarthy era in the About. It's highly political. It also is labeled as a mystery thriller but the murder was more like background noise, not front and center to the story.

🎧Saskia Maarleveld

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Weekend Crashers ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Image
The Weekend Crashers by Jamie Brenner G👀dreads A knitting retreat gets knotty in this humorous and poignant novel about love, second chances, and the unyielding bonds between mothers and daughters. Maggie Hodges and her daughter Piper are looking forward to a restful knitting retreat in the picturesque village of New Hope, Pennsylvania. But instead, they are surprised to find themselves sharing their charming riverside inn with a rowdy bushcraft bachelor party. Undaunted by the clash of interests and personalities, Maggie suggests a lighthearted competition—a battle of crafts—that sparks a rivalry between the two groups, and perhaps something more. But as the weekend unfolds, old mistakes and buried resentments begin to surface, threatening to destroy Maggie and Piper’s cherished connection. In knitting, one can easily fix mistakes by picking apart each stitch and starting anew. But life’s tangles aren’t so easily mended. With tensions rising and the retreat coming to a close, Maggie ...
Read more

The Woman with the Cure ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Image
The Woman with the Cure   by Lynn Cullen  G👀dreads In 1940s and ’50s America, polio is as dreaded as the atomic bomb. No one’s life is untouched by this disease that kills or paralyzes its victims, particularly children. Outbreaks of the virus across the country regularly put American cities in lockdown. Some of the world’s best minds are engaged in the race to find a vaccine. The man who succeeds will be a God. But Dorothy Horstmann is not focused on beating her colleagues to the vaccine. She just wants the world to have a cure. Applying the same determination that lifted her from a humble background as the daughter of immigrants, to becoming a doctor – often the only woman in the room-she hunts down the monster where it lurks: in the blood. This discovery of hers, and an error by a competitor, catapults her closest colleague to a lead in the race. When his chance to win comes on a worldwide scale, she is asked to sink or validate his vaccine—and to decide what is forgivable...
Read more

The Siren's Cursed Kiss ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Image
The Siren's Cursed Kiss by Kat Kinney  A.R.T. =  Tiffany Vanlandingham's  Audiobook Review Team pick. I received this audiobook as member of her ART in exchange for an honest review. G👀dreads EVERWOOD FALLS… a small supernatural community tucked up in the Colorado Rockies where witches, werewolves and vampires can live without fear of discovery, and those with curses they can’t control are sent to keep the existence of magic from being revealed to Mundanes. Green witch Sage Summers is no stranger to curses. The night her power manifested, the park outside her apartment devoured a strip mall. Classified by the Magic High Council as too dangerous to live in the Mundane world, she’s made a life for herself in Everwood Falls with her organic produce, a weekly stand at the farmer’s market, and the best group of friends a witch could ever hope for. But isolation has also meant the loss of her family, as well as an ex-fiancé who decided to put her and Everwood Falls in his rear...
Read more