The Forgotten Room

 Book 27 of my 2021 Reading Challenge

The Forgotten Room

by Karen White, Beatriz Williams, and Lauren Willig

Summary (via the book jacket)

published 2016

1945: When critically wounded Captain Cooper Ravenel is brought to a private hospital on Manhattan's Upper East Side, young Dr. Kate Schuyler discovers a complex mystery that connects three generations of women in her family to a single extraordinary room in a Gilded Age mansion.

Who is the woman in Captain Ravenel's miniature portrait who looks so much like Kate? And why is she wearing the ruby pendant handed down to Kate by her mother? In their pursuit of answers, they find themselves drawn into the turbulent stories of Olive Van Alan, driven in the Gilded Age from riches to rags, who hires out as a servant in the very house her father designed, and Lucy Young, who in the Jazz Age came from Brooklyn to Manhattan seeking the father she had never known. But are Kate and Cooper ready for the secrets that will be revealed in the Forgotten Room?

First Impressions/Judging a Book by Its Cover

This book has been on my 'to-read' list since January 2016.  I'm not sure why I added it back then but I'm reading it currently because of random selection; to avoid only reading new additions, I choose a random page of my 'to-read' list and if my library owns the book, I get it.  That has been a good way to continue my random reading during curbside (no browsing) service.

The cover looks sumptuous, like this is going to be a sweeping, regal (even if not necessarily about royalty) story.  

My Opinion

2 stars

Looking at my impressions before reading it, I would agree this was a sweeping story with an aristocratic undertone covering multiple generations.  Unfortunately, it wasn't the read for me.  

2 star ratings are books that I personally didn't enjoy but objectively, there are redeeming qualities and I could understand why a different reader may like it.  

Positive: The main characters were well fleshed-out and the authors did a good job of continuing the story as they alternated between the characters and timelines.  

Negative: I just couldn't suspend all of my disbelief at the coincidences needed to move along the story.  I can get behind a little bit, such as everyone meeting in the way they do, but when it seemed to develop into every plot point I felt too stretched.  The house has been renovated multiple times yet artifacts are still there?  The characters couldn't talk to each other about misunderstandings (not just the romantic relationships but also parent/child and siblings) yet left letters/physical evidence so future characters could unravel it all? 

So I think someone could become absorbed in the characters and ignore the coincidences.  Maybe that someone could've even been me at a different point.  But on this day at this time, this just wasn't the book for me.