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City Of Ash (2011)

by Megan Chance(Favorite Author)

3.76 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0307461033 (ISBN13: 9780307461032)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Broadway Books

review 1: This is one of my favorite books of all time. I loved it. A Chicago socialite is miserable in her marriage and steps over a line. Her wealthy father banishes her and her husband to the Seattle Territory in 1889. She is very remorseful for her behavior in Chicago and strives to be the kind of wife that will make her husband happy but it is not to be. He has ulterior motives. Enter the theatre crowd of 1880's Seattle. Our socialite is invited to be part of an acting troupe (engineered by hubby) and becomes inmeshed in that life. She is given the female lead in a play and the role is taken away from a great actress and she is very unhappy about it. There is great tension on the set. Meanwhile hubby wants to be rid of his wife to take over her inheritance and comes up with an... more ingenious plan to make her appear crazy and to have her father commit her. The Socialite figures out what he is doing just as the Seattle Fire of 1889 strikes and destroys much of the city, including the theatre. The actors, including Ms. Socialite barely escape but Geneva (socialite) and Beatrice (Good Actress) become bound together trying survive the aftermath. Hubby thinks Geneva is dead and the two ladies come up with a plan to make him think he is crazy. Absolutely engenious. This is one of the few books I have ever read that I would read again.
review 2: This takes place in a time period and setting that I haven't read much of, so I was intrigued. It's a story of women fighting against their roles in a patriarchal society: Ginny, a disgraced Chicago socialite, and Bea, an actress struggling to find fame on the stage. It succeeds in creating a strong female friendship scenario and a fun take on the play-within-a-play trope, but it takes a very long time to get to those elements. The majority of the book is set-up: Ginny and Bea don't actually interact until perhaps halfway through the novel, and their friendship only blooms in the last third, whereupon we're entangled in a bit of a rushed climax. less

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