The Golden Hour

Product Information

Key plot points felt glossed over, almost like it was jumping from point A to point C, with nothing really linking the two things together. Plus, a historical fiction about The Duke and Duchess of Windsor sounded just the ticket for escapism. I found myself continually looking back to try to figure out whether the chapter I was about to read came before or after a previous chapter about these same characters. Benedict Thorpe disappears without a trace, and Lulu embarks on a journey to London and beyond to unpick Thorpe's complicated family history: a fateful love affair, a wartime tragedy, and a mother from whom all joy is stolen. I am definitely looking forward to reading more from this author and will recommend this to lovers of historical fiction!

It includes historical moments from the Bahamas, Germany, Switzerland, United States and London/Scotland.Lulu came to the Bahamas as a journalist for an American magazine, all of 25 years old, to primarily report on the goings on of the extremely popular Duke and Duchess of Windsor, recently “banished” to the islands, still a British colony, to serve as its Governor, after he abdicated the throne as King of England. There she gets caught up in possible treasonous acts and meets Benedict Thorpe, a man she thinks is more than he is letting on. Together, they all work on projects and their friendship grows (and with Sebastian, it’s clear that there may be more than just friendship there). Where this book suffers for me is really only in comparison to her other books, which is perhaps unfair, and I think my experience of this is very YMMV.

When I started reading this historical fiction book I was excited to learn Wallis Simpson and her husband, the former king of England who gave up the throne, were going to be a characters in the story.The portrait of wartime Bermuda and the awful Windsors, observed and reported by Lulu, is original and fascinating.

And always love when the 18th or 19th or 20th century woman has a 21st century moral and value scale. The stories of two remarkable women a generation apart are cleverly intertwined in Williams’s sweeping family saga. For the most part though, the gravitas of the Wars are kept to the outside, Pearl Harbor is discussed but being in the Bahamas during the time and lack of Internet keeps the news to feeling surreal. What more compelling setting for a magazine feature than a wartime Caribbean paradise, a playground for kingpins of ill-gotten empires? Centering and finding oneself in the aftermath of trauma is a difficult thing to do, and undoubtedly exponentially more challenging when you are of an age still trying to figure out who you are under normal circumstances.Beatriz Williams is the New York Times, USA Today, and internationally bestselling author of The Golden Hour, The Summer Wives, The Secret Life of Violet Grant, A Hundred Summers, and several other works of historical fiction, including three novels in collaboration with fellow bestselling authors Karen White and Lauren Willig. I would recommend this book to any historical fiction fans out there, but I would also recommend it to everyone else aw well! I longed for a couple more scenes with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and some of the other historical characters. Now, I have to admit that I love plenty of her books, but that one just rocked my world as I listened to the audio version. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition.