Weekend Buddy Reads
Thank you publishers for these gifted books.
Happy Saturday!!
My weekend is dedicated to buddy reads with some pretty amazing women, and they are all historical fiction books which are my favorite. The best part is that our weather is finally warm enough to open the pool back up, so I’ll be reading poolside today!!
The Stolen Lady (Pub 9/21) - I started this book earlier in the week with @mamas_top_shelf and we are pretty much a third of the way through. Right now we are in the slow burn background, but I feel like the pace is about to pick up.
Synopsis:
France, 1939
At the dawn of World War II, Anne Guichard, a young archivist employed at the Louvre, arrives home to find her brother missing. While she works to discover his whereabouts, refugees begin flooding into Paris and German artillery fire rattles the city. Once they reach the city, the Nazis will stop at nothing to get their hands on the Louvre’s art collection. Anne is quickly sent to the Castle of Chambord, where the Louvre’s most precious artworks—including the Mona Lisa—are being transferred to ensure their safety. With the Germans hard on their heels, Anne frantically moves the Mona Lisa and other treasures again and again in an elaborate game of hide and seek. As the threat to the masterpieces and her life grows closer, Anne also begins to learn the truth about her brother and the role he plays in this dangerous game.
Florence, 1479
House servant Bellina Sardi’s future seems fixed when she accompanies her newly married mistress, Lisa Gherardini, to her home across the Arno. Lisa’s husband, a prosperous silk merchant, is aligned with the powerful Medici, his home filled with luxuries and treasures. But soon, Bellina finds herself bewitched by a charismatic monk who has urged Florentines to rise up against the Medici and to empty their homes of the riches and jewels her new employer prizes. When Master Leonardo da Vinci is commissioned to paint a portrait of Lisa, Bellina finds herself tasked with hiding an impossible secret.
When art and war collide, Leonardo da Vinci, his beautiful subject Lisa, and the portrait find themselves in the crosshairs of history.
The Last Debutantes - I just started this book yesterday with @sirbarksalotbooks and only put it down because I couldn’t keep my eyes open after a long (but fun) day, and I was fighting to keep them open since it’s such an interesting story that grabbed me from the beginning.
Synopsis: When Valerie de Vere Cole, the niece of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, makes her deep curtsey to the King and Queen of England, she knows she’s part of a world about to end. The daughter of a debt-ridden father and a neglectful mother, Valerie sees firsthand that war is imminent.
Nevertheless, Valerie reinvents herself as a carefree and glittering young society woman, befriending other debutantes from England’s aristocracy as well as the vivacious Eunice Kennedy, daughter of the U.S. Ambassador. Despite her social success, the world’s troubles and Valerie’s fear of loss and loneliness prove impossible to ignore.
How will she navigate her new life when everything in her past has taught her that happiness and stability are as fragile as peace in our time? For the moment she will forget her cares in too much champagne and waltzes. Because very soon, Valerie knows that she must find the inner strength to stand strong and carry on through the challenges of life and love and war.
The Dressmakers of Auschwitz (Pub 9/14) - Today I’m starting this book with @reader_mama and I’m going to keep a box of Kleenex on hand just in case, but I just know this is a story I will love.
𝗦𝘆𝗻𝗼𝗽𝘀𝗶𝘀: At the height of the Holocaust twenty-five young inmates of the infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp—mainly Jewish women and girls—were selected to design, cut, and sew beautiful fashions for elite Nazi women in a dedicated salon. It was work that they hoped would spare them from the gas chambers.
This fashion workshop—called the Upper Tailoring Studio—was established by Hedwig Höss, the camp commandant’s wife, and patronized by the wives of SS guards and officers. Here, the dressmakers produced high-quality garments for SS social functions in Auschwitz, and for ladies from Nazi Berlin’s upper crust.
💬 𝗔𝗻𝘆 𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗻𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗸𝗲𝗻𝗱?
