This is a duel timeline historical fiction novel with some romantic elements. After an introduction set in 1990, the book opens in 1968 with Frankie Saunders finally determined to leave her no-account abusive husband. What was the final straw for Frankie? She's pregnant. Unfortunately her carefully choregraphed plan goes all to hell when Jackson comes home early from work and her escape route, her Aunt Daisy, shows up in her flashy cherry red Ford Mustang early and stoned out of her mind to boot. A bunch of Drama Llama happens, Frankie ends up not taking the bus from Chicago to Los Angeles, and instead ends up agreeing to making the trip in the Mustang with Daisy and a white boy named Tobey (apparently Daisy and his mother were friends, but this is 1968 and Frankie doesn't trust white boys as a general rule).
The other half of this story is set in 1928 and follows a young college-dropout (for reasons) Daisy working at the newly opened, Black built and owned, Hotel Somerville, located on "Black Broadway" in downtown Los Angeles. Daisy is a chambermaid with ambitions to be a journalist working for one of the famous Black newspapers, and the hotel quickly becomes the hotspot for the city's Black elite. This means Daisy has the inside track on collecting ALL the gossip - which she's doing for a local newspaperman she went to high school with. Daisy needs the money and is hustling her pretty little butt off. Her mother fell into a deep depression after her brothers (Daisy's uncles) died in the St. Francis Dam collapse and has been catatonically lying in bed ever since. Daisy wants to get her mother into one of those posh sanatoriums, not the vile state run hospital that her father is proposing.
My goal in reading fiction is not to "learn something," but I will admit it's a nice added bonus when I do. I live in Southern California and had NO CLUE about the Hotel Somerville (which still stands today as part of Dunbar Village and provides affordable senior housing) so the setting, the peppering in of real life historical figures, and the glimpse into that history was really interesting. Unfortunately it's wasted on poor pacing and half-baked character development.
The story is bookended with chapters set in 1990 and it's in the first chapter we learn there was a murder in 1928. Honestly, I ended up forgetting about it because the story drags on and the murder doesn't even happen until the 80% mark. What happens before that? Not much. 1928 Daisy playing spy gathering gossip, trying to keep her younger sister in line, and falling in love with Malcolm Barnes, an affluent Black man determined to become a premier architect. 1968 Frankie spends the entire time bickering with 1968 Daisy all while somehow not having any kind of meaningful conversation with her (Daisy and Frankie's mother haven't spoken in 40 years and Frankie LITERALLY JUST MET Daisy like two weeks prior to the start of the book). Literally they just bicker. About nothing. It's boring and exhausting.
There's no bread crumbs. No teasing little reveals of family secrets to keep the reader moving forward in the book. It's all backloaded towards the end and when the murder finally does come to light? Everything, quite literally EVERYTHING, is told to the reader. A police officer showing up on 1928 Daisy's doorstep telling her there's been a murder. The final denouement at the end told to 1968 Daisy by a secondary character. Tell, tell, tell. I wasn't invested in any of it.
Exacerbating the problem is Daisy's character development. Folks, I couldn't figure out for the life of me how I was supposed to believe that 1928 Daisy was the same person as 1968 Daisy. For lack of a better description, 1928 Daisy is hardworking, earnest and has a stick up her butt. Oh she'll bend some rules but in many ways she's quite proper. 1968 Daisy is a cherry red Mustang driving, smoking (cigarettes and marijuana), drinking, switchblade carrying (and not afraid to use it) mouthy woman with no filter. I'm not saying these two people can't be the same person - what I am saying is that with nothing happening for 80% of the book there's not enough bread crumbs left for me to believe these two people are the same person. When it comes to Daisy we start at A and somehow end up at Z with no explanation let alone foreshadowing along the way.
It's, of course, all right as rain in the end. Frankie escapes her abusive husband (yes he of course learns she's pregnant and goes chasing after her cross country), Daisy learns the truth and reunites with her sister...along with another secondary character. The problem is I didn't care. It's hard to care about a dead body when it simply falls from the sky at 80% and then the "suspense" is told to the reader. It's hard to care about what happens to the characters when not much happens for most of the book. This is hardly an offensive read, but it's disappointing because the concept, setting and history all made for an interesting framework. It's just what was populating that framework was rather bland.
Final Grade = C-
1 comment:
Dammit. The premise sounds dynamite, and if it were properly paced (both in Daisy's character development and in the other interpersonal relationships that, one presumes, both lead to the murder and its resolution), I'd be all over it, especially because of the historical context.
As it is, I'm gonna skip it entirely.
Post a Comment