Book Review for Husbands & Lovers by Beatriz Williams

 Husbands & Lovers by Beatriz Williams

Publication:  June 25, 2024 by Ballantine Books

Genre:   Chick Lit, Historical Fiction

Taken from Goodreads:  Two women—separated by decades and continents, and united by a mysterious family heirloom—reclaim family secrets and lost loves in this sweeping novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Summer Wives.

New England, 2022. Three years ago, single mother Mallory Dunne received the telephone call every parent dreads—her ten-year-old son Sam had been airlifted from summer camp with acute poisoning from a toxic death cap mushroom, leaving him fighting for his life. Now, in a search for the donor kidney that will give her son a chance for a normal life, Mallory’s forced to confront two harrowing secrets from her past: her mother’s adoption from an infamous Irish orphanage in 1952, and her own all-consuming summer romance fourteen years earlier with her childhood best friend Monk Adams—now one of the world’s most beloved singer-songwriters—a fairytale cut short by an agonizing betrayal.

Cairo, 1951. After suffering tragedy beyond comprehension in the war, Hungarian refugee Hannah Ainsworth has forged a respectable new life for herself—marriage to a wealthy British diplomat, a coveted posting in glamorous Cairo. But a fateful encounter with the enigmatic manager of a hotel bristling with spies leads to a passionate affair that will reawaken Hannah's longing for everything she once lost. As revolution simmers in the Egyptian streets, a pregnant Hannah finds herself snared into a game of intrigue between two men…and an act of sacrifice that will echo down the generations.

Timeless and bittersweet, Husbands And Lovers draws readers on an unforgettable journey of heartbreak and redemption, from the revolutionary fires of midcentury Egypt to the moneyed beaches of contemporary New England. Acclaimed author Beatriz Williams has written a poignant and beautifully voiced novel of deeply human characters entangled by morally complex issues—of privilege, class, and the female experience—inside worlds brought shimmeringly to life.

 

My Thoughts:  Beatriz Williams is a must-read author.   Her historical fiction books transport me back in time while her characters become real people.   Husbands & Lovers is a dual timeline book.   Mallory is a single mom with a son that needs a kidney transplant.   Hannah is in Egypt in the 1950’s.  Both characters have a past that they are not talking about and future that will not be easy.   

Husbands & Lovers is a book that pulled me right in and I did not want to leave.   Mallory  is a strong character that made choices for the good of her son, making her a wonderful mother.   Hannah’s story taught me about Egypt during the revolution while also showing how strong love can be.   Both characters made choices that did not make their lives easy but they both showed their strength to have a future.      

The storylines intertwine and come together perfectly.  I wish I could read this book again for the first time.  

Thank you Ballantine Books for a copy of the book via Netgalley in exchange for my honest review.

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Meet Beatriz Williams (taken from her website):  Beatriz Williams is the New York Times, USA Today, and internationally bestselling author of Our Woman in Moscow, The Summer Wives, Her Last Flight, The Golden Hour, The Secret Life of Violet Grant, A Hundred Summers, and several other works of historical fiction, including four novels in collaboration with fellow bestselling authors Karen White and Lauren Willig. A graduate of Stanford University with an MBA in Finance from Columbia University, Beatriz worked as a communications and corporate strategy consultant in New York and London before her first novel was published in 2012. Beatriz’s books have won numerous awards, have been translated into more than a dozen languages, and appear regularly in bestseller lists around the world.

Born in Seattle, Washington, Beatriz now lives near the Connecticut shore with her husband and four children, where she divides her time between writing and laundry.