Wednesday, August 31, 2011

INCOGNITO by Gregory Murphy


I absolutely love the Gilded Age. It just seemed like such a beautiful time in history. My favorite movie of all time is Somewhere in Time and when I lived in Newport, RI I made sure to tour the Vanderbilt summer house The Breakers. I would have loved to live in the Gilded Age, if I was exceptionally rich. Either way, Incognito is everything a girl like me wants in a book. It was rich (not just the characters) in story; there was love, betrayal, mystery, fantastic character development and beautiful descriptions.

William Dysart, is a lawyer working on a case where he is to try a purchase some land from a young unmarried Sybil Curtis. His client will not take no for an answer, in fact she will have the property condemned in order to seize it. When William meets Sybil he is taken aback by her unwillingness to sell her property to him (Sybil realizes who really wants it) and is rather willing to be thrown out of her home than to sell. Neither woman will tell William what their previous relationship was. William can’t help but attach himself to the young Miss Curtis and wants nothing more than to help her.

As William struggles with his feelings for Sybil Curtis, his home life begins to unravel. His beautiful socialite wife, Arabella shows her manipulative ways making William realize she is not the woman he thought she was. His lost memories surrounding the death of his mother make him question his father and the things he’s been told his whole life. All the seams of William’s life begin to unravel, leaving William with truths more disturbing than he had ever suspected.  

This is a dramatic story of New York high society in 1911 that you will not want to put down.  The further I read the more captivated I became by the story. I would have thought a man who becomes so entangled with another woman would enrage me as a married woman, but truthfully I felt nothing but compassion for William. I was absolutely fascinated with every twist and turn of the novel. The only negative about this book is I had trouble keeping a number of the supporting characters straight.

I highly recommend this book!

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