Kate Quinn often writes books that are set during the World Wars, but "The Briar Club" takes place in 1950s D.C. In the author's note, Quinn talks about this as novel that was started during the pandemic when the world longed for community and connection. You can definitely feel that while reading it. Despite being set in a time of relative peace in America (the Korean war was going on at this time, but for most people it felt far away), there is no lack of suspense. This is the McCarthy era after all, and fear and suspicion is in the fabric of the country.

The novel is set in an all-female boarding house called Briarwood. The women who live there have different backgrounds, personalities, interests, and opinions, but they are all brought together by a new arrival to the house: Grace March. They don't always like each other, but they begin to form a community through their weekly dinners in Grace's small room.

The novel's framework is built around the Briarwood. The book begins from the perspective of the house, and is set four years in the future, where blood is on the walls and the police have come to take everyone's statement. The next chapter is from the perspective of someone in the house. Then we learn more from the Briarwood's perspective in the present. Then we get a chapter from another resident of the house, which gradually brings us to where the story began and we FINALLY learn what happened.

I'm not normally a fan of big cast stories, but this structure worked for me. I think the reason why it worked was because each person's story has a journey in their chapter. They grew, they learned, they changed, and their story had a satisfactory conclusion in that chapter. It was almost like having multiple short stories in one book that all built on each other and tied together.

Each of the characters experience different aspects of living in the 1950s, and Quinn does a great job showing a wide variety of lived realities. Kate Quinn novels are always full of romance, suspense, and history, and "The Briar Club" is no exception. ( )