Zoe Carter tantalizes us with the first part of her six part thriller series. Sarah is living every woman's alleged fantasy life with a gorgeous, wealthy husband, a healthy, beautiful baby boy, and a house in East Hampton, Long Island. Except it's not. The growing stench of backstabbing neighbors, marital infidelity, a demanding, cruel mother-in-law, and eating disorders permeate Sarah's life. Pushed by her mother-in-law to invite her family to her son's christening, Sarah reluctantly contacts her estranged sister, Maisey, thereby adding buried dark family secrets to her already troubled life.
Carter knows how to write and how to keep her readers glued to the page. Indeed, Part 1 of "Take it to the Grave" is such an exhilarating, roller coaster of a ride, it's hard to imagine a reader not grabbing the next installment in the series.
(In return for an honest review, I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.)
* Print Length: 64 pages
* Publisher: Harlequin Special Releases (June 1, 2017)
* Publication Date: June 15, 2017
* Sold by: Harlequin Digital Sales Corp
Did any of this change? The number or type of officiants, perhaps? Or the precedence given to one type of service over another? At the last minute, did Edith Galt, as a woman who ran her own business and had been previously married, ask her mother to stand back and in a gesture of independence “give herself” to Mr. Wilson?
"World War I isn’t usually considered to be America’s war. The US joined the fighting late – the war began in the fall of 1914 and America joined the fray in 1917. By and large, stories about the war tend to focus on the experience “over there”—in English or French country homes, or in the battlefields of Europe. To me, it seems that we know more about World War II, in part because of that war’s atrocities and in part because it had clear good guys, Roosevelt and Churchill, and bad guys, Hitler and Stalin. World War I is more complicated. It was started by Kaiser Wilhelm--first cousin to King George of England--but was the result of military buildup that had been going on in Europe during the so-called “Belle Epoque,” a seemingly tranquil period of peace and prosperity—and the setting of many beloved period series and films. But tensions were mounting behind the scenes and when they exploded, the world changed. Empires that had ruled great swathes of the world for centuries fell: the Hapsburgs of Austria-Hungary, the Romanovs of Russia, the Ottomans of Turkey, and the seeds were set for the modern world of nation-states that we inhabit and for political strife that haunts us to this day.
In her second Kitty Weeks novel, Radha Vatsal again takes us back to the 1910s, a tumultuous time in U.S. history, where women are demanding the long promised right to vote, and, as World War I bloodies Europe, the American government and defense industries are quietly preparing for war.
Although World War I raged in Europe starting in 1914, the United States did not declare war on Germany until April 6, 1917. As we enter into the centennial anniversary of America's involvement in that war, historical novels, such as Radha Vatsal's excellent, debut novel, "The Front Page Affair," provide clear and insightful glimpses into the tension-filled and fearful miasmas that permeated New York City in the years preceding 1917.
