From international bestselling author Alyson Richman comes a love story, a ghost story, and an elegy to the healing power of books.
Harry Widener boards the Titanic holding tight to a priceless book he just purchased in London. After mayhem strikes the ship, Harry’s last known words are that he must return to his cabin for his treasure. Neither the young man nor the book are seen again. In his honor, his mother builds the Harry Widener Memorial Library at Harvard to memorialize her son and house his extensive book collection.
Decades later, Violet Hutchins, a Harvard sophomore recovering from her own great loss, is working as a page at the Widener Library. When strange things begin happening at the library—books falling off shelves or opening to random pages—Violet wonders if Harry Widener’s ghost is trying to communicate the missing pieces of his story from beyond the grave.
This powerful and haunting novel is perfect for readers of Marie Benedict’s The Personal Librarian and Sulari Gentill’s The Woman in the Library.
Genres
Historical Fiction
Historical
My thoughts. I always love dual storylines that come together, so I knew this was up my reading aisle so to say. I am going to be honest--I had a couple of hesitations about The Missing Pages. First, a male perspective--I know I know not very enlightened of me, but I don't read a lot of books with a man as the protagonist. Second, this really sounds like a story about a lot of books. Now I'm a bit of a Bibliophile myself, so I was open to the idea, but I just couldn't imagine how a ghost, books, libraries and a historic male protagonist would converge into a great read. The book had my attention with its beautiful cover, a great author and a book synopsis a little different than a lot of books,
Let me tell you, I fell in love with Harry. I loved his ghost and his story. I honestly enjoyed reading about his part of the story more than Violets. Not that there was anything about her storyline that I didn't like-I did! I just wanted to know his story, understand his motivation! I was willing Violet to go faster in her search for learning more about Harry! I don't want to give any of the story away, but you learn his demise pretty early on, but when you get to the moment---have the Kleenex handy! I was heartbroken!
Violet. Oh, sweet Violet. Her story was a story of healing. I was rooting for her the entire book. I wanted so much for her. I was angry at how she was treated at one point. I loved her tenacity to uncover Harry's true story. I wanted a happy ever after for her.
I really enjoyed this book. I highly recommend!
As of December 1, 2009, According to The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), product reviewers on blogs must disclose whether they received products for free or received payment for their review.
The books I review on this site (A NOVEL REVIEW) are sent to me by publishers, authors or downloaded from Netgalley. This is a very common practice. I never take payments for these reviews and all the reviews on this site are my own thoughts and feelings and are not influenced.
Links on this site through Amazon are a part of their affiliate program and I may receive a small compensation if you purchase through one of the links that appear on this blog.
No comments:
Post a Comment