Author: Kate Quinn
Published: 2024
Genre: Historical Fiction, Cozy Mystery

Synopsis From Goodreads:

A haunting and powerful story of female friendships and secrets in a Washington, D.C. boardinghouse during the McCarthy era.

Washington, D.C., 1950. Everyone keeps to themselves at Briarwood House, a down-at-the-heels all-female boardinghouse in the heart of the nation’s capital, where secrets hide behind white picket fences. But when the lovely, mysterious widow Grace March moves into the attic, she draws her oddball collection of neighbors into unlikely friendship: poised English beauty Fliss whose facade of perfect wife and mother covers gaping inner wounds; police officer’s daughter Nora, who is entangled with a shadowy gangster; frustrated baseball star Bea, whose career has ended along with the women’s baseball league of WWII; and poisonous, gung-ho Arlene, who has thrown herself into McCarthy’s Red Scare.

Grace’s weekly attic-room dinner parties and window-brewed sun tea become a healing balm on all their lives, but she hides a terrible secret of her own. When a shocking act of violence tears apart the house, the Briar Club women must decide once and for all: Who is the true enemy in their midst?

My Take:

Thanksgiving 1954 – Washington DC

If these walls could talk. Well, they may not be talking, but they are certainly listening. And watching.

Briarwood House is as old as the century. The house has presided – brick fronted, four-storied, slightly dilapidated – over the square below for fifty-four years. It’s seen three wars, ten presidents, and countless tenants . . . but until tonight, never a murder. Now its walls smell of turkey, pumpkin pie and blood, and the house is shocked down into its foundations.

Also, just a little bit thrilled. This is the most excitement Briarwood House has had in decades.

This book is unlike any of Kate Quinn’s other. This book is billed as historical fiction, but while it takes place in the 1950s, I wouldn’t call it pure historical fiction. It is more of a cozy mystery/women’s lit set in the past. It starts with a prologue from the house’s perspective. The following chapters each focus on one of the main characters and what brought them to Briarwood House. Each is interesting in its own right, and they intertwine at the end. The book progresses as the characters learn more about each other through the help of the protagonist, Grace. Grace forms The Briar Club, which takes place once a week, with each tenant supplying dinner for the group in Grace’s tiny attic room. Personalities clash, fights ensue, and politics divide. The author explores many themes prevalent in this time period, including McCarthyism, misogyny, and racism, but this isn’t the focus of the story.

While I thoroughly enjoyed this book, the POV changes with each chapter felt jarring. I would just get into a character’s story, and it would switch to a different one. I fully expected it to come back to the character to finish her story, but it never did. While a bit frustrating, the author did a fantastic job weaving the storylines together in the end, and I was left with a satisfying conclusion I didn’t see coming. Recipes from food served at the Briar Club dinners are included at the end of each chapter.

You might want to move on if you are looking for a “clean” book. There are innuendoes and implied sex (all off-page), frequent swearing, and a homosexual character. This may not work for you if you are looking for a pure cozy mystery. If you are looking for pure women’s lit, this may leave you disappointed. BUT if you are looking for a story with engaging characters with a slow burn wrapped in an ingenious murder mystery, this book is for you. If this book were “clean”, I would give it five stars.