Three Words for Goodbye
A Novel
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4.4 • 57 Ratings
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
From Hazel Gaynor and Heather Webb, the bestselling authors
of Meet Me in Monaco, comes a coming-of-age novel set in pre-WWII Europe,
perfect for fans of Jennifer Robson, Beatriz Williams, and Kate Quinn.
Three
cities, two sisters, one chance to correct the past . . .
New York, 1937: When estranged sisters Clara and Madeleine
Sommers learn their grandmother is dying, they agree to fulfill her last wish:
to travel across Europe—together. They are to deliver three letters, in which
Violet will say goodbye to those she hasn’t seen since traveling to Europe
forty years earlier; a journey inspired by famed reporter, Nellie Bly.
Clara, ever-dutiful, sees the trip as an inconvenient detour
before her wedding to millionaire Charles Hancock, but it’s also a chance to
embrace her love of art. Budding journalist Madeleine relishes the opportunity
to develop her ambitions to report on the growing threat of Hitler’s Nazi party
and Mussolini’s control in Italy.
Constantly at odds with each other as they explore the
luxurious Queen Mary, the Orient Express, and the sights of Paris and Venice,, Clara and Madeleine wonder if they can fulfil Violet’s wish, until
a shocking truth about their family brings them closer together. But as they
reach Vienna to deliver the final letter, old grudges threaten their
reconciliation again. As political tensions rise, and Europe feels increasingly
volatile, the pair are glad to head home on the Hindenburg, where fate
will play its hand in the final stage of their journey.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Gaynor and Webb (Meet Me in Monaco) return with a slight historical romance. In 1937, worldly East Hampton, N.Y., matriarch Violet Bell is dying. She sends her adult granddaughters, Clara and Maddie, to Europe with letters to convey her final goodbyes to faraway loved ones. Inseparable during childhood, the girls have clashed since artist Clara's recent engagement to real estate developer Charles Hancock, whose rapaciousness Maddie finds deplorable. Meanwhile, Clara secretly longs for her older, married art tutor, while the brilliant but awkward Maddie wants to break into journalism. The sisters cross the Atlantic on the Queen Mary, share a compartment on the Orient Express, continue by train to Austria, and, before returning via the ill-fated Hindenburg, see the sights of Paris, Venice, and Vienna. While discovering things about themselves and their family, they bond, just as Violet had hoped. Each chooses a worthy man without discarding her identity or ambitions, and the story doesn't end with everyone tidily married off. Overall, though, the authors prize travelogue over deep feeling, and despite frequent mentions of Hitler and Mussolini, the ominous historical currents receive short shrift, and there is little to distinguish the protagonists as women of the 1930s. It's diverting, but not particularly impressive.
