The Wedding Veil

Author: Kristy Woodson Harvey
Genre: Fiction / Historical Fiction
Publisher: Gallery Books, 2023
Pages: 448
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Present Day: Julia Baxter's wedding veil, bequeathed to her great-grandmother by a mysterious woman on the train in the 1930s, has passed through generations of her family as a symbol of a happy marriage. But on the morning on her wedding day, something tells her that even the veil's good luck isn't enough to make her marriage last forever. Overwhelmed and panicked, she escapes to the Virgin Islands to clear her head. Meanwhile, her grandmother Babs is also feeling shaken. Still grieving the death of her beloved husband, she decides to move out of the house they once shared and into a retirement community. Though she hopes it's a new beginning, she does not expect to run into an old flame, dredging up some of the same complicated emotions she felt a lifetime ago.

1914: Socialist Edith Vanderbilt is struggling to manage the luxurious Biltmore Estate after the death of her cherished husband. With 250 rooms to oversee and an entire village dependent on her family to stay afloat, Edith is determined to uphold the Vanderbilt legacy - and prepare her free-spirited daughter Cornelia to inherit it - in spite of her family's deteriorating financial situation. But Cornelia has dreams of her own. Asheville, North Carolina has always been her safe haven away from the prying eyes of the press, but as she explores more of the rapidly changing world around her, she's torn between upholding tradition and pursuing the exciting future that lies beyond Biltmore's gilded gates.

Review: As with most dual-timeline novels, I preferred one time period more than another. In this case, it was the present-day story. I don't know if I was more in the mood for a cute / fluffy story, but I wasn't feeling the historical fiction piece of this novel. The "mystery" behind the veil wasn't really a mystery and the Vanderbilt story added pages, not depth. I love this author though and look forward to reading more of her books.

Also by Kristy Woodson Harvey:
The Summer of Songbirds