My Rating: 4 stars
Three formidable women.
Three different time periods. One
hotel that connects their stories together.
This is the premise of All the
Ways We Said Goodbye, which is the latest work of historical fiction
from the famous ‘Team W’ – authors Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, and Karen
White. I’m familiar with each of these 3
author’s works individually, however this is my first time reading one of their
collaborative efforts (though I have their previous two collaborations on my bookshelf
waiting for me), and seeing how much I enjoyed this one, I am definitely grateful
for the opportunity.
The story opens first in the year 1964, with recently widowed Barbara
“Babs” Langford at a crossroads trying to figure out her life after the death
of her beloved husband Kit. When Babs
receives a letter from an American lawyer named Drew Boudoin seeking her help with
locating a Resistance fighter whom her husband possibly knew while working in
Nazi-occupied France during World War II, she agrees to join him in a search
that finds them traveling to Paris and the famous Ritz hotel. We are then taken back to the year 1914, at
the onset of the Great War, where Aurelie, the daughter of the Comte de Courcelles,
decides to leave her mother, who has been residing at the Ritz hotel in Paris,
to accompany her father at their ancestral estate in Picardy, France. Not long after she arrives, the estate is
taken over by German troops who requisition the home as well as its surrounding
area for their headquarters. During this
time, Aurelie discovers that she actually knows one of the German officers –
Max von Sternburg – from her debutante days in Paris and despite being on
opposite sides, they strike up a friendship that later develops into something
more. The timeline then switches to
1942, where Marguerite “Daisy” Villon lives with her Nazi collaborator husband
Pierre and their 2 children in Paris, a few blocks from the Hotel Ritz where she
grew up and where the grandmother who raised her still lives. After some persuasion, Daisy agrees to assist
in her grandmother’s Resistance efforts by helping to deliver identity papers
created by a skilled forger named Legrand, to Jewish refugees. Eventually, Daisy gets pulled deeper into the
Resistance network, where working closer and closer with Legrand with change
her life in ways she never expected.
The first thing that struck me about this novel was the seamlessness
of the writing in that, to me at least, there was really no way to tell that 3
different authors were involved with writing this -- this is significant given that,
in their individual works, each author has her own distinct style of writing,
yet here, those different styles were pretty much indistinguishable. Given the way the story was structured – with
three alternating timelines anchored by three women with distinctly different
personalities – I was impressed by how cohesively the narratives flowed
together. In addition to some clever transitions
thrown in that linked the end of each chapter to the beginning of the next one
(which I actually didn’t catch on to until about a third of the way through the
novel), the various plot points were also well-crafted in terms of joining the
timelines together in a way that still left room for each character’s
individual stories to be told. Speaking
of the characters – one of the things I liked most about this book was the character
development aspect, especially with regard to the 3 female protagonists, all of
whom I found myself rooting for. Even
the male characters were written well, which isn’t always easy to do when the
female characters in the story are strong and at the forefront of driving each
of the narratives forward – I felt that the authors were able to strike a good
balance in this aspect in terms of giving us strong, well-developed characters
on both sides.
With all that said however, I did struggle a little bit with the
rating on this one, as there were a few things about this book that I had a problem
with, which is why, in the end, I chose to rate this 4 stars instead of 5. One of the biggest issues was the emotional depth
of the story, which I found surprisingly lacking given the setting against the
backdrop of 2 World Wars -- I was expecting to be more moved by the story and
even shed a tear or two, but that didn’t happen. Perhaps the reason for this is, while there
were plenty of historical elements, all of which were incorporated well into each
of the narratives, the focus of the story overall seemed to lean more heavily toward
the romance aspect and the relationships between the characters. Of course, nothing wrong with this per se,
but since I’m more of a historical fiction fan and less keen on romance, it
makes sense that this would impact my reading experience a bit. Another thing was that the plot elements were
largely predictable in that, from the first chapter, I kind of already knew the
direction that the story would be headed (and it turns out I was spot-on in
terms of how all 3 narratives tied together), so there ended being no surprises
or “gut-punch” moments for me.
Overall, I did enjoy reading this one, as it had many of the
things I expect in a good book: a
compelling, well-written story that kept me turning the pages; well-developed, complex characters that I felt
invested in (to different extents); a relatively fast-paced plot that flowed well;
and of course, a well-incorporated historical setting. I think fans of the 3 authors will love this
one and while it wasn’t necessarily a “favorite” in my book, I liked it well
enough to want to go back through all 3 authors’ backlists as well as read the
previous two ‘Team W’ works that they did – hopefully some time in the near
future, I will have time to do so!
Received ARC from William Morrow (HarperCollins) via NetGalley.
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