The Magnolia Palace

If you love historical fiction that provides a great story and teaches you a bit about history, then you have to read Fiona Davis. Davis excels at providing her readers with an interesting story that is rooted in historical American locales and will easily add a few sites to see on your future travels.

The Magnolia Palace is her upcoming book that is loosely based on real historical figures. The story is set in the Frick mansion-turned-museum and is told using two POVs - one in the 1920's and the other 40 years later. With her characters, historical details and vivid descriptions, Davis pulls her readers into a mystery, the art world and the lavish lifestyle of the Frick family.

The 1920's timeline follows Lillian Carter, an artist's model who in order to hide from police, takes a job as personal secretary to Helen Frick, the cantankerous daughter of mogul Henry Clay Frick. The 1960's POV centres around a young model and an intern at the Frick Museum (formerly mansion) who find themselves stuck overnight in the museum and endeavor to unlock some of the museum's secrets when they are stuck during a snowstorm.

This was a solid mystery that is accentuated with descriptions of both eras and details the often complex and dysfunctional familial bonds in the Frick family. This family was considered NYC royalty of the time with their extravagant lives, accommodations and connections. I found the ending a bit pat but otherwise, this was an enjoyable read that kept me eagerly turning the pages.

Fiona Davis remains one of my auto-read authors because she excels at balancing story and history and by reading her books, particularly those set in NYC, I now have a list of places I need to visit when travel becomes feasible again.

Disclaimer: My sincere thanks to Dutton Books for my advanced copy provided in exchange for my honest review.

My Rating: 4 stars

Author: Fiona Davis

Genre: Historical Fiction (USA)

Type and Source: eBook from publisher via NetGalley

Publisher: Dutton Books

First Published: January 25, 2022

Opening Lines: New York City, 1919 - Lilian Carter stood 

half naked, one arm held up like a ballet dancer, the 

other hanging lightly down at her side, and calculated how 

long she could avoid paying rent while her landlord was in jail.

Book Description from GoodReads: Fiona Davis, New York Times bestselling author of The Lions of Fifth Avenue, returns with a tantalizing novel about the secrets, betrayal, and murder within one of New York City’s most impressive Gilded Age mansions.

Eight months since losing her mother in the Spanish flu outbreak of 1919, twenty-one-year-old Lillian Carter’s life has completely fallen apart. For the past six years, under the moniker Angelica, Lillian was one of the most sought-after artists’ models in New York City, with statues based on her figure gracing landmarks from the Plaza Hotel to the Brooklyn Bridge. But with her mother gone, a grieving Lillian is rudderless and desperate—the work has dried up and a looming scandal has left her entirely without a safe haven. So when she stumbles upon an employment opportunity at the Frick mansion—a building that, ironically, bears her own visage—Lillian jumps at the chance. But the longer she works as a private secretary to the imperious and demanding Helen Frick, the daughter and heiress of industrialist and art patron Henry Clay Frick, the more deeply her life gets intertwined with that of the family—pulling her into a tangled web of romantic trysts, stolen jewels, and family drama that runs so deep, the stakes just may be life or death.

Nearly fifty years later, mod English model Veronica Weber has her own chance to make her career—and with it, earn the money she needs to support her family back home—within the walls of the former Frick residence, now converted into one of New York City’s most impressive museums. But when she—along with a charming intern/budding art curator named Joshua—is dismissed from the Vogue shoot taking place at the Frick Collection, she chances upon a series of hidden messages in the museum: messages that will lead her and Joshua on a hunt that could not only solve Veronica’s financial woes, but could finally reveal the truth behind a decades-old murder in the infamous Frick family.