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The Forgotten Seamstress Free Preview (The First 4 Chapters) (2014)

by Liz Trenow(Favorite Author)

3.94 of 5 Votes: 2

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Sourcebooks Landmark

review 1: The back of the book threatens with the word "heartbreaking." This is usually enough for me to back away, but I decided to give it a shot anyway. Through cassette tapes the reader is introduced to Maria, a seamstress in Buckingham Palace. Seduced by the Prince of Wales, Maria is sent to Helena Hall, a mental institution. Then there is Caroline, a thirty something trying to figure out life who receives the quilt that Maria made. Determined to solve the mystery, Caroline begins a bit of an investigation with the help of Ben, a newspaper reporter. The story moves along, and you feel sympathetic toward all the characters. While there were some plot points that could have been left out, the story itself was well worth the read.
review 2: I love any book that i... morenvolves any form of needlework, I used to do quite a lot many years ago and I am drawn to books that incorporate these skills into a story. When I saw the title of this book and the large number of 4 and 5 star reviews I picked it up. Unfortunately I was underwhelmed with the storyline.Told in a dual-narrative, in two different time periods, this is the story of Marie, a seamstress in the court of King George V. It is also the story of Caroline in present times. While helping her mother to clean up her home pending some construction Caroline comes upon an old hand stitched quilt that was her grandmother’s. The story of the quilt is the center of the book. The writing in this book was good, the problem for me was the believability of the story told and the abundance of coincidences that made me think – well that’s convenient. Although I found Marie an interesting character, with an incredible (if improbable) story to tell, Caroline was not nearly as interesting and was more of annoyance every time she came back into the narrative. Marie was a more fully developed character, Caroline was a 38 year old career woman who often acted like she was 20. I found her behavior on several occasions laughable.The story of the quilt was interesting, but the secret of how the quilt came into Caroline’s family wasn’t that hard to figure out, so the big reveal felt like a letdown. It was too perfect and coincidental and implausible. Had this book been only about Maria, without the current day storyline I think it would have made for a much more satisfying story. I also appear to be in the minority in terms of my rating, most reviews rated it much higher, but it just did not work for me. less

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