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The Forgotten Room
The Forgotten Room
The Forgotten Room
Audiobook13 hours

The Forgotten Room

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

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About this audiobook

New York Times bestselling authors Karen White, Beatriz Williams, and Lauren Willig present a masterful collaboration-a rich, multigenerational novel of love and loss that spans half a century.... 1945: When the critically wounded Captain Cooper Ravenal is brought to a private hospital on Manhattan's Upper East Side, young Dr. Kate Schuyler is drawn into a complex mystery that connects three generations of women in her family to a single extraordinary room in a Gilded Age mansion. Who is the woman in Captain Ravenel's portrait miniature who looks so much like Kate? And why is she wearing the ruby pendant handed down to Kate by her mother? In their pursuit of answers, they find themselves drawn into the turbulent stories of Gilded Age Olive Van Alen, driven from riches to rags, who hired out as a servant in the very house her father designed, and Jazz Age Lucy Young, who came from Brooklyn to Manhattan in pursuit of the father she had never known. But are Kate and Cooper ready for the secrets that will be revealed in the Forgotten Room? The Forgotten Room, set in alternating time periods, is a sumptuous feast of a novel brought to vivid life by three brilliant storytellers.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateJan 19, 2016
ISBN9781501904714
The Forgotten Room
Author

Karen White

Karen White is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of twenty-five novels, including Dreams of Falling and The Night the Lights Went Out. She has two grown children and currently lives near Atlanta, Georgia, with her husband and two spoiled Havanese dogs.

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Reviews for The Forgotten Room

Rating: 4.1096939010204085 out of 5 stars
4/5

196 ratings26 reviews

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    loved this story....I kept rooting for each woman and so glad the ending was worth it... definitely recommend it!!!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    One of my favorite books! I love how the authors weaves us through time.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The storyline really kept me until the end. It was a bit difficult to keep the storylines clear, but worth the read.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Another great read from these three. As always it takes just a bit to get all of the characters from the three different story lines straight but very well worth that little bit of deep concentration.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    It’s a wonderful book very romantic and realistic at the same time
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The 3 generations that experienced the secret room and their family connections
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A well-crafted story that weaves together characters from three generations. It was hard to tell who wrote what, which is often not the case with collaborations like these.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Lovely story following 3 generations of women trying to make sense of their world and find love. Easy read
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The perfect trifecta of authors made this book a huge hit for me! An awesome mastery of storytelling. Three generations of women unknowingly connected, a hidden attic room, and a wide cast of characters create the story. The magic occurs as you move along and pieces begin to click into place. How they coordinated it is beyond me.....but it was such a worthwhile read!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I've been looking forward to reading this book for a while and was not disappointed. The library had it labeled as a "mystery" novel which kind of confused me at first. Once I got to the end I realized why they did that because the wheels were constantly turning in my head trying to figure out who was related to who and how the story would turn out. The three women's stories were blended together very nicely and key information was always given at just the right time. I look forward to reading the other novels from these three authors.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    An intriguing story about three generations of women that fall in love with men in the same room in the same house. I found story a little confusing at first until I memorized the names that went with each time period. I liked the richness of the descriptions of the people and places and how I found myself rooting for different characters. There is a puzzle at the end of the story that brings all the different pieces together.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Loved it. And just when you think you've got it all straight... nope. Just a nice story!!
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I enjoyed the first half of this book more than the second - I found myself rolling my eyes a lot at the romantic cliches.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Listened to this on Audible Audio - it took a few starts and 3 year span to finally get into it. Very Difficult to keep the 3 generations apart and quite difficult to get interested - but Finally did and I actually enjoyed this love story of 4 different love stories that are bound together by descendants of the same famiies; We learn of the love story of a painted portrait, a ruby pendant; starting with Harry the son of a wealthy family and Olive a maid to the family; the next generation with Lucy, a secretary & John an art dealer to Kate, a doctor during the war & Cooper a wounded soldier. The secrets held on the 7th floor of the Pratt Mansion. Will they finally end up together? Keeps you guessing until the very last page!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is the story of three women and the connections between them. Olive, in 1892, is the daughter of an architect who committed suicide after his wealthy client failed to pay him for designing his house. Olive goes undercover as a housemaid to find out a way to discredit the man and ends up falling in love with his artist son. But a housemaid and a wealthy man is just a recipe for disaster and her lack of faith in him causes her to marry another man. The heartbroken artist disappears and is never heard from again.Lucy, in 1920, takes a job in a law firm to find out about her own past and her mother's. She believes that the missing artist was her father. Meanwhile, John Ravenel has come to New York to learn the hidden past of his father, a famous artist. He and Lucy fall in love but he has failed to disclose that he is already married and has a son. She marries another man but still regrets the loss of her "true love."Kate, in 1944, is a doctor who has a patient named Captain Cooper Ravenel who carries a miniature that looks incredibly like Kate and who is wearing a ruby pendant that matches the one Kate inherited from her mother. The two of them try to solve the mystery of his pendant and her necklace and fall in love. Their love is complicated both by his fiancee and her focus on her career. I enjoyed this story of three women who all were trying to solve mysteries and who found and lost love along the way. One connecting piece of the story was the Pratt mansion which became Lucy's boarding house for respectable women and Kate's hospital to deal with soldiers with war wounds. Another connection is the ruby pendant and the miniature which all three women have. This was an interesting exploration of the roles of women and the options they had at various times in the past from Olive who had few choices and Kate who had many. It was also a story about mothers and daughters and fathers and daughters.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    In 1893, Olive, the daughter of an architect who killed himself after a falling-out with a client, takes a job as a maid in the mansion her father designed. She hopes to find proof of the owner's perfidy to restore her father's name.

    In 1920, Lucy is looking for the truth about who her father was. Was it the man who raised, the man she loved as her father, or someone her mother knew before marrying Hans Jungmann?

    In 1945, Kate, a young doctor, is working in the private hospital that was once the women's boarding house her mother lived in, and before that the grand mansion of the Pratt family. Badly wounded Capt. Cooper Ravenel is brought to the hospital, and for lack of any other place to put him, he's installed Kate's room under the eaves. She can sleep temporarily in nurses' quarters.

    And Capt. Ravenel has a portrait miniature of a woman who appears to be--Kate.

    Three generations of women look for answers to a family mystery, fall in love, and are faced with painful, even heartbreaking choices between what they want and what they know to be right. Their stories are told in alternating chapters, as the Ravenels, Cooper and his father John, also investigate the family mystery of where their father and grandfather Augustus came from before he appeared in Cuba, married his wife Maria, and moved to Charleston, South Carolina.

    It's all nicely layered and carefully developed, layer after layer uncovered as both the practical and emotional lives of Olive, Lucy, and Kate are revealed. These are human characters, with virtues and flaws quite believably distributed among them. Even the best of them has flaws; even the least sympathetic of those around them prove to have some depth and to grow over time.

    This is a very well-done tale of love and family intrigute.

    Recommended.

    I received free electronic galleys of this book from the publisher via both NetGalley and Penguin's First to Read program.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book was written by 3 authors who pulled the book together beautifully. It is the story of 3 different women from 1892, 1920 and 1944 and the draw or attachment they each have to a room in a mansion. Nice read and fun to read all the different times in history.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Excellent novel filled with mystery, architecture and art, and even a lovely ruby necklace. The story is told from the viewpoint of three women spanning three generations beginning in 1892 and ending in 1944. The authors did a great job spinning the mystery out a little bit at a time, and when you think you have it all figured out, you don't! The book had me drawing out a family tree for the protagonists, and even checking laws on consanguinity in marriage.Very well written, highly recommended.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    An excellent book could not put it down.The book is divided into three stories all part of one story. Three women wrote the book; dealing the story of three women's lives. I could not tell where one writer stopped, and the other began. This book is set between 1892 until 1944 and uses all the glamor of the 1890's and the depression of World War II.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    three generations of women, all based on the same mansion in nyc
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Three best-selling authors have come together to write a novel about three women united by one iconic New York City building and a ruby necklace. Over glasses of wine, these three authors decided it would be fun to write a novel together. Williams knew of an old mansion in Manhattan that was now being used as a private hospital. After a tour of the mansion, the three authors knew they had a story to tell. From three different generations, three women tell their story of lost love all while being connected to the same mansion. Each chapter tells the story of the women, alternating between them. Olive is a house-maid to the wealthy Pratt family who live in the mansion during the 1890’s. During the 1920’s, Lucy lives in the mansion, which is now a boarding house. Lucy works for the law firm that represents the Pratt family. She is trying to understand her family secrets and her connection to the Pratt family and hoping some files in the law firm will give her the answers she needs. Then in the 1940’s the mansion is turned into a hospital. Kate, a doctor in the hospital, heals soldiers coming home from the war. When an injured Captain arrives, she finds a painting of her in his personal items. She risks everything to find out where the painting came from and their connection to each other. As the reader immerses themselves into lives of these three women, they will try to understand the connection between the three women over the last fifty years.The transitions between the characters and their stories are so seamless, you would never know it was written by three different authors. You would never know that as each author wrote for a bit, she would send her chapters along to the next one for them to read and continue writing. I was thankful I read this in a print copy because, in the beginning, I did flip back and forth reminding myself of the three women and their connection to the Pratt family. That's not as easy to do when using an eReader. I loved the architectural detail describing the family mansion. The fact that it is based on a real mansion in Williams' family makes it even more fascinating. Having the character of Kate be a doctor during a time when women weren't supposed to be taking on traditionally male roles made her character even more interesting. The love interests in each of the women's stories were passionate and romantic but not over-the-top. The reader would be rooting for them, even knowing their relationship was likely doomed from the start. This story is full of "what-if" situations and difficult choices loaded with heartbreak. Since you have to read through three chapters to get back to a character, you will want to keep reading to see what will happen next. These three authors are talented individually, but together they create a story that will remind you to follow your heart and not to lose sight of your dreams. Favorite Quote:Except for a daily visit with the other doctors on our morning rounds, I hadn't seen or spoken to him. But that didn't mean I didn't miss him like the winter earth missed the sun.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Three stories - co-authored by three excellent writers- focused on three periods of American history - 1890's, 1920's and 1944. I admit that I was initially skeptical that this work could hang together well under those conditions, but it does so outstandingly. Each of the three stories is beautifully interwoven with the other, speaking of relationships between mother, daughter and granddaughter; husbands and wives, lovers and jealous relations. Can lies be forgiven if even devised for the right reasons? Can love endure through the most difficult of conditions? This book is richly poetic and painterly in its writing and scene settings. A lovely and well written story and one not soon forgotten. I am grateful to authors Karen White, Beatriz Williams and Karen Willing, publisher New American Library and Goodreads First Reads for having provided a free uncorrected proof copy of this book. Their generosity did not, however, influence this review - the words of which are mine alone.Synopsis (from book's back cover):New York Times bestselling authors Karen White, Beatriz Williams, and Lauren Willig present a masterful collaboration—a rich, multigenerational novel of love and loss that spans half a century....1945: When the critically wounded Captain Cooper Ravenal is brought to a private hospital on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, young Dr. Kate Schuyler is drawn into a complex mystery that connects three generations of women in her family to a single extraordinary room in a Gilded Age mansion.Who is the woman in Captain Ravenel's portrait miniature who looks so much like Kate? And why is she wearing the ruby pendant handed down to Kate by her mother? In their pursuit of answers, they find themselves drawn into the turbulent stories of Gilded Age Olive Van Alen, driven from riches to rags, who hired out as a servant in the very house her father designed, and Jazz Age Lucy Young, who came from Brooklyn to Manhattan in pursuit of the father she had never known. But are Kate and Cooper ready for the secrets that will be revealed in the Forgotten Room? The Forgotten Room, set in alternating time periods, is a sumptuous feast of a novel brought to vivid life by three brilliant storytellers.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Sometimes when a story is written in different time periods I can get lost but not in this story. It is so well done. I give it a five out of five stars. I loved all the characters in each time period. The story really begins with Lucy, then continues with Olive and ends with Kate. Each chapter goes through a little bit of each woman's story so you only know a little of each at a time. It was impossible to put down. Would any of the three have happiness in the end. I received an ebook copy of this from Firsttoread for a fair and honest opinion.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I received this book from NetGalley for an honest review.This novel is written by three authors but is done seamlessly and there is no indication that it isn't all one author. The story is about three women in three different time periods who are connected by a painting and a house. I can't go into a lot of detail without giving away important plot points but believe me when I tell you that once you start this book, you aren't going to want to put it down. Its a little bit mystery, a little bit romance and a lot of intrigue. I loved it!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The wonderfully, moving story of three generations of women who have all known the miraculous gift of true love but only one of them has had the strength to trust in her feelings and the man who has touched her heart.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    THE FORGOTTEN ROOM by Karen White, Beatriz Williams, Lauren WilligI read this as an ebook from NetGalley and the publisher. I wish I had read a print copy. It was difficult to keep the characters straight – which one was Lucy, which one was the doctor, which one the maid, how were they connected……That said, I enjoyed this three part novel with interconnected heroines. Some of the secrets I guessed, some I didn’t until the big reveal. I liked that the some items became more important (for example, the ruby necklace) as you continued to read. The ending with Prunella was a little too contrived, but it worked for the novel. I wondered if the three main characters were written by different authors, but decided that two must have given expert knowledge and Karen White was the “real” author (Am I right?). I hope the finished copy has a note to answer the question.All in all, an enjoyable read with several twists. Good character development for the women, the men were more stock characters and not as well developed. The quick romances were a too quick. The art could have been more detailed as it was an important part of the story. The artist of the “second” inferior mural was never really made clear. No one seemed to have the talent or time to create this copy is such a way that it was recognizable as a copy.4 of 5 stars