Please Note:  I received an advance copy of this novel from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.  This did not influence the opinions in my review in any way.

Synopsis (from Goodreads):

We can't choose what we inherit. But can we choose who we become?

In present-day California, Eleanor Bennett's death leaves behind a puzzling inheritance for her two children, Byron and Benny: a traditional Caribbean black cake, made from a family recipe with a long history, and a voice recording. In her message, Eleanor shares a tumultuous story about a headstrong young swimmer who escapes her island home under suspicion of murder. The heartbreaking tale Eleanor unfolds, the secrets she still holds back, and the mystery of a long-lost child, challenge everything the siblings thought they knew about their lineage, and themselves.

Can Byron and Benny reclaim their once-close relationship, piece together Eleanor's true history, and fulfill her final request to "share the black cake when the time is right"? Will their mother's revelations bring them back together or leave them feeling more lost than ever?

Charmaine Wilkerson's debut novel is a story of how the inheritance of betrayals, secrets, memories, and even names, can shape relationships and history. Deeply evocative and beautifully written, Black Cake is an extraordinary journey through the life of a family changed forever by the choices of its matriarch.

Review:

Much like a cake, this book from author Charmaine Wilkerson, has so many layers, it's hard to believe this is a debut novel!  The story begins as two siblings are preparing for their mother's funeral. The family lawyer tells them that their mother wants her children to listen to a recording she has made.  In it, family secrets are revealed which prompts them to reassess who they thought their parents were.  Oh, it's juicy!  

But there is so much more to this story.  Each character has a strong storyline of their own.  Why did Benny, Eleanor's daughter drop out of college?  Why is Byron try so hard to be the perfect son?  What happened in Jamaica?  And why did Eleanor and her husband want to erase their pasts?  The is a wonderful book that shows each generation's dreams and heartaches.  I highly recommend it.

What I liked:

Characters:

Bryon oldest son of Eleanor tries to be the perfect son.  His parents have transferred all their ambitions onto him, as some immigrant do, and he doesn't want to let them down.  But all this pressure to be successful has been difficult for Byron.  Yes, he has money but, as a black man in America, he still gets pulled over by the cops several times a year.  He's still looked over for promotions at work.  He is slowly finding that he craves more meaning to his life.  He wants to work on the bigger issues of racism, and provide scholarships to other people of color.

Benny is Byron's younger sister.  She seems, to her family, to be a flake, dropping out of college, and then flittering from one profession to another.  But Benny has had some trauma that she hasn't told her family about.  Considering how her parents reacted to her announcement that she liked both men and women one Thanksgiving, it's no wonder.  Benny just doesn't feel like her family has her back.

Of course Eleanor's story is at the heart of the book.  Try as she might, she sees that she holds no value to her father until he can use his daughter so settle his massive gambling debts.  She feels very alone in the world.  But she actually has a host of people supporting her in the background.  But, even with that support, Eleanor mostly has to rely on herself to get out of a series of terrible situations.  Talk about a resilient character!

Story:

There are two stories that alternate within the novel.  Part of the action takes place in Jamaica in the 1960's, where Eleanor grew up.  Her father is an irresponsible gambler who only sees her value in what she can do for him.  With her mother having fled, Eleanor is raised by Pearl, a housekeeper who teaches her how to make Black Cake, a traditional Jamaican dessert that is similar to a fruitcake.  She also finds solace in swimming with her best friend, Bunny.  Their friendship develops into a deep connection that will be put to the test later in the story. 

The other story takes place in modern day California, as Byron and Benny prepare for Eleanor's funeral.  Emotions run high as the siblings haven't spoken in years.  Their once close-knit family had become fragmented when Benny's father couldn't accept that his daughter was bisexual.  There are so many missed moments when Benny and her parents could have reconnected, but didn't.  It was truly heartbreaking.

But what I really liked about the story was understanding how each generation had a complicated life, filled with joys and sorrows.  It can be very hard to imagine that our parents had these dramas, when we only see them as a mother or a father.  

Immigrant Experience:

This book shows how displaced people find a way to create a new home wherever they go.  Eleanor does this with cooking, sharing her recipe for Black Cake with Benny.  I also loved how Eleanor noticed other Caribbean immigrants wherever she was.  Sometimes that was a comfort, hearing the sounds of other people from her home country.  Other times, it made her nervous.  What if someone recognized her and told people from Jamaica where she was?  But Eleanor, and many immigrants like her, manages to create connections with people wherever she is.  Although she does miss Jamaica, it's her connections to people that are most important to her.

Rating:  ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Release Date:  February 1st, 2022

Author:  Charmaine Wilkerson

Publisher:  Ballantine Books

Genre:  Literary Fiction

Page Length:  400 pages

Source:  NetGalley

Format:  E-Book

Recommendation:  If you like family sagas, this book is for you.  With many complex characters, this is a novel you will think about for a long time.

Please Note:  I received an advance copy of this novel from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.  This did not influence the opinions in my review in any way.

Synopsis (from Goodreads):

Eight months since losing her mother in the Spanish flu outbreak of 1919, twenty-one-year-old Lillian Carter’s life has completely fallen apart. For the past six years, under the moniker Angelica, Lillian was one of the most sought-after artists’ models in New York City, with statues based on her figure gracing landmarks from the Plaza Hotel to the Brooklyn Bridge. But with her mother gone, a grieving Lillian is rudderless and desperate—the work has dried up and a looming scandal has left her entirely without a safe haven. So when she stumbles upon an employment opportunity at the Frick mansion—a building that, ironically, bears her own visage—Lillian jumps at the chance. But the longer she works as a private secretary to the imperious and demanding Helen Frick, the daughter and heiress of industrialist and art patron Henry Clay Frick, the more deeply her life gets intertwined with that of the family—pulling her into a tangled web of romantic trysts, stolen jewels, and family drama that runs so deep, the stakes just may be life or death.

Nearly fifty years later, mod English model Veronica Weber has her own chance to make her career—and with it, earn the money she needs to support her family back home—within the walls of the former Frick residence, now converted into one of New York City’s most impressive museums. But when she—along with a charming intern/budding art curator named Joshua—is dismissed from the Vogue shoot taking place at the Frick Collection, she chances upon a series of hidden messages in the museum: messages that will lead her and Joshua on a hunt that could not only solve Veronica’s financial woes, but could finally reveal the truth behind a decades-old murder in the infamous Frick family.

Review:

I have a deep love of historical fiction novels, as they place the reader in a time and place that is often unknown.  Good historical fiction develops empathy for the characters and helps us understand the past.  In the last few years, author Fiona Davis has put out several novels, all set in New York City, that explore the challenges women face at different points in history.  The Magnolia Palace, her latest book, is a wonderful addition to Davis' list of achievements.  There were several characters that I quickly became invested in, and historical details about New York that I didn't know about.  For fans of historical fiction, this is a must-read!

What I Liked:

Historical Details:

This novel actually is set in two different historical periods, 1919, and 1966.  Both time periods are richly drawn.  In 1919, New York is a city of contrasts.  Some neighborhoods are filled with tenements, with the threat of severe poverty just around the corner.  Other areas are filled with mansions from The Gilded Age, with almost obscene excesses.  The concerns of poor and rich couldn't be more different.  I liked how the author showed how much the newspapers oft he day influenced the city.  If you were targeted by the gossip pages, your life could be ruined. 

In 1968, the Frick mansion has become the Frick Museum (an actual place in New York City), where the massive art collection of Henry Clay Frick is displayed.  But even in this setting, we can see the struggles of the time playing out.  A young black intern at the museum shows the reader about his challenges as he has to constantly prove he belongs there.  And Veronica, a young woman on a modeling assignment, is dealing with the harassment, and sexism that is so rampant in that time.  I was particularly struck be the details of what models had to bring on photoshoots.  The model, not the company who hires her, must provide her own makeup, jewelry, shoes, and other accessories for the assignment.  I can't imagine how expensive that must have been!  Again, the extravagance of the fashion world is in sharp contrast to realities of regular people who want to aspire to something more.

Story:

In 1919, The Gilded Age is over, and what is left in New York are mansions that are too big, and rich people living in the past.  For Henry Clay Frick, it means a reckoning at the end of his life.  What will his legacy be?  Does he want to be known as a union-busting villain, or as a dignified patron of the arts?  Obviously, he wants to be know for his massive art collection.  

For Lillian Carter, a twenty-year old sculptor's model who just lost her mother to the Spanish Flu, all she's thinking about is survival.  After she is implicated in a sordid murder, the newspapers of the time have a field day portraying her as little more than a prostitute.  She inadvertently stumbles into the Frick household, and is hired to be the personal secretary of Helen Frick.  No one in the house knows who she really is, so she feels this is a good place to hide in plain sight. As she settles into her new job, she finds that she is very good at organizing, planning, and carrying out projects.  She can earn a living using her mind, and not just her beauty.  However, Lillian seems to attract scandal wherever she goes.   

1968 is a time of change throughout the world, but especially in New York.  Veronica is a young model from England who is doing a photoshoot at the Frick Museum (formerly the Frick mansion).  The job is for Vogue magazine, so this is her big opportunity.  But, as she is verbally abused by an egotistical photographer, she starts to think that maybe being a model is not all it's cracked up to be.  But what can she do?  She doesn't have an education, and her family is counting on her to make good money. 

She meets a young Black man who is an intern at the museum, and sees the kind of challenges he has to face daily.  He has to constantly prove that he belongs there and isn't a threat. It's exhausting.  But she also sees how hard he is working towards he goals and becomes inspired.  There is a mystery that ties the two timelines together.  It really made the stories compelling.

Characters:

I loved Lillian.  She is someone who has had to survive using her wits, and her beauty.  Although she is quite intelligent, Lillian is still a very young person who isn't sophisticated enough to see she's in a dangerous social situation that could harm her.  Even in challenging situations, Lillian knows her worth and doesn't succumb to self-doubt.

Helen Frick is the single thirty-something daughter of  Henry Frick.  She is a really complicated person.  On the one hand I hated that she was so abusing to her staff, berating them and treating them worse than her pets.  On the other hand, she was also mentally messed up!  Henry liked to pit family members against each other, so there was constant bickering between Helen and her brother.  She also had to compete with her sister, who died at six years old.  Her parents idealized Martha (the dead sister) and Helen never felt she could make up for her parents' loss.  What a terrible thing to never feel the love of your parents.

Veronica, the young model in 1968, was much like Lillian.   Both were models and needed to find their own path in the world.  Both faced an ethical dilemma.  For Veronica, she was seriously thinking about stealing something valuable from the museum .  Lillian, flattered by the attentions of Helen's suitor,  was offered a large sum of money from her employer to help Helen find a man and get married. Will they do the right thing, or will money influence their moral choices?

Rating:  ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Release Date:  January 25, 2022

Author:  Fiona Davis

Publisher:  Dutton

Genre:  Historical Fiction.

Page Length:  368 pages

Source: NetGalley

Format:  E-Book

Recommendation:  If you love historical fiction, you will enjoy this book.  I certainly did!

Please Note:  I received an advance copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.  This did not influence the opinions in my review in any way.

Synopsis (from Goodreads):

Violeta comes into the world on a stormy day in 1920, the first girl in a family of five boisterous sons. From the start, her life will be marked by extraordinary events, for the ripples of the Great War are still being felt, even as the Spanish flu arrives on the shores of her South American homeland almost at the moment of her birth.

Through her father's prescience, the family will come through that crisis unscathed, only to face a new one as the Great Depression transforms the genteel city life she has known. Her family loses all and is forced to retreat to a wild and beautiful but remote part of the country. There, she will come of age, and her first suitor will come calling. . . .

She tells her story in the form of a letter to someone she loves above all others, recounting devastating heartbreak and passionate affairs, times of both poverty and wealth, terrible loss and immense joy. Her life will be shaped by some of the most important events of history: the fight for women's rights, the rise and fall of tyrants, and, ultimately, not one but two pandemics.

Review:

I have read many books by author Isabel Allende. starting with The House of the Spirits (from 1982) to her most recent novel, Violeta.  She writes lovingly of the people of her native Peru, but not of it's historically corrupt government.  She has a way of making historical events come to life through the characters in her books.  While I liked the characters in Violeta, and appreciated the one-hundred year span of the story, I wasn't blown away by this book.  I think the reason for this was the format that she used for the story's structure. It made it hard to connect with any other character besides Violeta, herself.

What I Liked:

Historical Details:

Although Violeta never tells us which country in Latin America she is from, we can guess from the details of the book that it is the author's home country of Peru.  I really appreciated how she wove in the evolution of the country's political history along with the story.  All I knew about Peru before this book was what Allende wrote about in The House of The Spirits.  The brutal and corrupt military dictatorships of the late nineteen-sixties on through the nineteen-eighties, brought unimaginable heartache to civilians.  But this book puts this in a larger historical context.  

Characters:

Violeta begins life as a pampered child in a large, wealthy family, complete with an English nanny.  But very quickly her family's fortunes change and the real strengths of the characters begins to show.  

The nanny, Miss Taylor, shows resilience as she has to move on from being a nanny to making a life for herself in a new country.  Once she is free from the social constraints of being a proper member of a rich household, she realizes she is drawn to Teresa, a free-thinking woman who isn't afraid to live life on her own terms.  I loved these two characters and would love to read an entire book about them!

Violeta's brother, José Antonio, turns out to be a strong, dependable supporter of Violeta and her mother.  As their father lost their fortune and later dies, the family is thrown into debt.  But José Antonio does what he can to keep everyone together.  

Violeta, over the long course of her life, has a number of relationships with men, and it is hinted that she had affairs with women, as well.  Her longest, and most volatile relationship is with the dashing Julian.  He sweeps her off her feet, and their passion turns her life upside down.  But, Julian shows himself to be a brute.  And for all of Violeta's strength, she just can't resist him.  Their relationship is very complicated and I thought the author did a good job of exploring this. 

What I Didn't Like:

Structure:

The story tells Violeta's life in a series of letters to someone in the present day.  Much of the story centers around Violeta's love life.  I just didn't believe Violeta (a one-hundred year old woman) would write letters freely discussing intimate details of sexual encounters!  While we don't know until near the end of the book who she is writing to, this just didn't seem realistic.

The letter format also made the novel limited in scope to only Violeta's point of view.  With such a rich array of characters to explore, I wish the book would have been written in more of a narrative style, so we could dig deeper into some of the other characters.  I would have loved to read about Violeta's nanny and her affair with a woman.  This was in a time when people would never be openly gay, so I wanted to know more about the obstacles the couple faced.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Release Date:  January 25, 2022

Author:  Isabel Allende

Publisher: Ballantine Books

Genre:  Historical Fiction

Page Length:  336 Pages

Source:  NetGalley

Format:  E-book

Recommendation:  Although the format limited the story, this is another solid offering from Isabel Allende