NAL – Penguin Group, January 19, 2016.
Three Stars
The Forgotten
Room is a collaboration between three authors known
for their historical, multi-generational love stories – and they are here, doing
what they do best. The novel follows three women and their experiences in one
house, a Gilded Age mansion that was passed down through a complicated family,
and later recommissioned as a WWII hospital. Chapters bounce between the
perspectives of the three women – Olive, who is present shortly after the house
is built; Lucy, who reenters the house during the 1920s; and Kate, the only
female doctor in a hospital full of wounded WWII soldiers.
It takes some patience to follow these three separate
storylines, especially since all three women are very similar in both their
descriptions and their voices. I found it hard to differentiate between them,
and Kate’s story was the only one I really connected with. There were also a
lot of parallels between the girls’ stories, and it felt like the authors were
trying too hard to line them all up – everything was very convenient. I also
spent probably too much time trying to figure out which of the authors was
telling the story at any given time.
So we have three different historical settings, which
should make things very interesting, yet I felt that the actual world-building
was missing. The house is described in detail, but the actual setting of time
and place is somewhat ignored. The history aspects of the novel had so much
potential to add to the story, but I left the book not feeling like I learned
anything about these three exciting eras. However, the novel is strong in historical romance tropes,
which did nothing to add intrigue – it’s hard to connect to the various love
stories when you know it will all be resolved in the end.
I was caught up in the mystery for the first half of
the novel, but then it just got muddled and confusing, and I found myself
losing interest. There were too many connections to keep track of, and I wasn’t
emotionally invested enough in the characters to want to keep up. And in fact,
none of the romance storylines were even all that romantic. All of the minor
characters (and most of the main ones) are stereotypes, with no really unique
characteristics. In fact, overall there was really nothing special about this novel,
but it’s still possible to enjoy it if you stop trying to make sense of
everything and just let the authors lead the way.
I received this novel from NAL – Penguin Group and Netgalley
in exchange for an honest review.
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