So... "The English Wife" by Lauren Willig. I will say that I was a huge fan of Willig's first few books in the "Pink Carnation" series. Her writing was witty and fun, while combining great historical stories with modern day story lines. Now around the fifth entry of the series, I tapped out. I'm not a fan of the never ending series, no matter how good it is. So when Willig started writing standalone novels, I sat up a took interest. I tried reading "The Other Daughter" and just couldn't get into it. But "That Summer" returned to the formula of combining a modern day mystery with a historical plot line and I was hooked.
"The English Wife" returns to a wholly historical plot and it is done very well--to a point. Though now that I think of it, it would have been interesting to see it in the same format at "That Summer" with a modern day protagonist trying to solve a historical mystery. But I digress."The English Wife" is set in Gilded Age New York, and told from two perspectives--Janie Van Duyvil and Annabelle Van Duyvil. The catch is that Janie is telling the story from 1899 and Annabelle is slightly in the past (1895). The two women tell their stories until the timelines match up in the end, which is rather clever. Janie is the daughter of a distinguished, monied New York family. As the novel opens, her older brother Bay has been murdered and his beautiful English wife Annabelle is missing. Janie is determined to solve the mystery as she is convinced that her sister-in-law would have never murdered the man she loved.
Janie teams up with Burke, an intrepid news reporter with no love for New York's aristocracy. Their attempts to discover the real killer are interspersed with flashbacks featuring Annabelle. Before she met Bay Van Duyvil, she was an actress in a burlesque show, fleeing from her past. She meets Bay on a whim, and is immediately distrustful, but their shared love for Shakespeare joins them together. Their friendship blooms into love and love into marriage, but it is not long before cracks begin to show. What results in the end are devastating secrets being revealed.
"The English Wife" was a page turner for the first two hundred pages or so. But as the novel should have been climaxing, it just ran out of steam. I actually sat it down for several days and only picked it up today to finish. I loved Janie, who was truly trying to be the good daughter, but in the end decided to follow her heart. Annabelle and Bay's story is heartbreaking; their characters were both flawed, and as a result, their marriage becomes a sham. So what went wrong? For one thing, I just could not buy into who Willig chose to commit the murder. It makes sense on the surface, but there were other characters that had better motive. While I applaud Willig for taking the road less traveled, the result was forced, and frankly, nonsensical to a point.
So would I recommend the novel? Sure. The suffocating atmosphere of Gilded Age New York is done well and lends a darker feel to the novel. I enjoyed it and I'm looking forward to reading whatever Willig has up her sleeve next. I really liked the fact that "The English Wife" was a true departure from her other historical novels. The book is out on January 9, 2018 and is available for pre-order on Amazon and all the other usual places. A big thanks to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for the advance copy.
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