Three women from three generations of a family falling in love with three men from another family? Can any of the relationships end well?

The book

The Forgotten Room is a historical fiction novel by Karen White, Beatriz Williams and Lauren Willig. Honestly, historical fiction isn’t my favorite genre but I recently read another Karen White novel that had a similar set-up so I was intrigued when I first heard about this.

(I call Karen White my almost-namesake and when she – the NY Bestselling author – followed me back on Twitter, it made my week, but that’s another story for another time)

The plot

Woman # 1 is Olive. Her father was an architect who worked on the Pratt Mansion and killed himself right after the job ended. Now, she’s returned to the house intent on finding out what happened there.

Woman #2, Lucy is Olive’s daughter. She’s a secretary now, living in the old Pratt Mansion, now a boarding house, so she can work in Manhattan.

It’s 1944 and Woman # 3 is Kate, a doctor, working in the old Pratt mansion which has recently been set up as a hospital for soldiers injured in the war.

The storytelling technique 

The novel switches between the 3 women’s perspectives, which I tend to like in some novels as it gives you a clearer first-person view of what is happening at all points in the story. However, in this case, it felt like the chapters were too short to do each point-of-view justice. Keeping track of which character was the mother and the daughter and what had happened in each person’s present felt a little confusing. However, I think some of that might have been because I was reading an electronic format.

My overall feeling

Aside from that, I enjoyed reviewing this ARC and would like to check out the full novel in print form (to see what additions were made after I read it)

Rating: 3.5 stars/5

Note: I read an free Advance Readers Copy of The Forgotten Room courtesy of NetGalley.com 

Hello fellow Netgalley readers. Does anyone have a recommendation for my next ARC?