Under the Stars by Beatriz Williams
From the New York Times bestselling author of Husbands & Lovers comes an epic tale of family legacy, love, and truths that echo down generations.
Audrey Fisher has struggled all her life to emerge from the shadow of her famous mother by forging a career as a world-class chef. Meredith Fisher’s glamorous screen persona disguises the trauma of the tragic accident that haunts her dreams. Neither woman wants to return to the New England Island they left behind and its complicated emotional ties, but Meredith has one last chance to sober up and salvage her big comeback, and where else but discreet, moneyed Winthrop Island can a famous actress spend the summer without the intrusion of other people? Until Audrey discovers an old wooden chest among the belongings of her estranged bartender father, Mike Kennedy, and the astonishing contents draw the women deep into Winthrop’s past and its many secrets…attracting the interest of their handsome neighbor, Sedge Peabody. How did a trove of paintings from one of America’s greatest artists wind up in the cellar of the Mohegan Inn? And who is the mysterious woman portrayed on every canvas?
On a stormy November night in 1846, Providence Dare flees Boston and boards the luxury steamship Atlantic one step ahead of the law….or so she believes. But when a catastrophic accident leaves the ship at the mercy of a mighty gale, Providence finds herself trapped in a deadly game of cat and mouse with the one man who knows her real identity—the detective investigating the suspicious death of her employer, the painter Henry Irving. As the Atlantic fights for her life and the rocky shore of Winthrop Island edges closer, a desperate Providence searches for her chance to escape…before the sea swallows her without a trace.
In Under the Stars, the destinies of three women converge across centuries, as a harrowing true disaster at the dawn of the steamship era evokes a complex legacy of family secrets in modern-day New England. Williams has written a timeless epic of mothers and daughters, of love lost and found, and of the truths that echo down generations.
Review: A huge thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.
Audrey Fisher has spent her whole life under the shadow of her glamorous, beautiful, movie star mother and genuinely loves her career as a world-class chef. Neither Audrey nor her mother Meredith have any interest in returning to their family home on Winthrop Island, but Audrey has been tasked with keeping her mother sober until her next acting gig, and the island is the perfect place to lay low. But it is also the place where a dark incident in Meredith's past took place when she was just a teenager. And it's also where Audrey's exchanged father lives. In alternating chapters, we go back in time to 1846, and the story of Providence Dare who is fleeing Boston on the Atlantic, which in the present-day chapters is a boat that famously sunk off the coast of the island.
There is a lot to like about this book. A beautiful, intriguing setting, complicated family dynamics, unexplained murders, hidden family connections, and complex relationship histories all feature heavily in this book. I was really intrigued by the mystery of what happened to Meredith as a teenager, what ended up happening to Providence Dare onboard the Atlantic,
This book has a lot going on. There are just too many stray plotlines to fully explore in one review, but this is jam packed with drama, tension, and mystery. The present-day chapters flip back and forth between 1993 and 2024. And then there is also the storyline from 1846. There are multiple famous characters, multiple missing characters, multiple mystery storylines, two murder storylines, and two sunken boats. Both Audrey and Meredith have complicated/absent father relationships. Audrey has a missing husband and a budding relationship. Meredith is an alcoholic, is traumatized by being the product of an affair, is haunted by the terrible accident that occurs to her as a teenager, has an on and off again relationship with Audrey's father Mike, and is a beautiful and famous actress. It just felt chaotic and a bit overwhelming at times. I read a physical copy of this book but wonder if I would have struggled to keep up with all the timelines, secrets, and character arcs if I had listened to it on audio. However, you will certainly not get bored reading this! There is something for everyone in this plotline.
I did not know going into this that it is connected to Husbands & Lovers. I loved seeing characters from that novel pop up in this book and getting to see a bit of their story beyond the ending of that novel. This was a fun and unexpected addition but reading the earlier novel is in no way necessary or required to understand or enjoy this one.
Stars: 4
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