Synopsis (from Goodreads)
Pages: 416
Publisher: Quercus
Released: 10th of January 2019
WHEN Esther Thorel, the wife of a Huguenot silk-weaver, rescues Sara Kemp from a brothel she thinks she is doing God’s will. Sara is not convinced being a maid is better than being a whore, but the chance to escape her grasping ‘madam’ is too good to refuse.
Inside the Thorels’ tall house in Spitalfields, where the strange cadence of the looms fills the attic, the two women forge an uneasy relationship. The physical intimacies of washing and dressing belie the reality: Sara despises her mistress’s blindness to the hypocrisy of her household, while Esther is too wrapped up in her own secrets to see Sara as anything more than another charitable cause.
It is silk that has Esther so distracted. For years she has painted her own designs, dreaming that one day her husband will weave them into reality. When he laughs at her ambition, she strikes up a relationship with one of the journeyman weavers in her attic who teaches her to weave and unwittingly sets in motion events that will change the fate of the whole Thorel household.
What I Have to Say
This was beautifully written. It delved a lot more into the Huguenot faith and how blind Esther was to what it really means to help people. How her charity wasn't as beneficial to the people she was trying to help than she thought. How she lived in luxury with servants and expensive furniture when so many people, people she employed in her household, people who worked under her husband had so much less.
I liked both of the women, though. Despite how badly Esther handled things and how abrasive Sara was, there was something about their stories that drew you in and made it easy to get caught up in their hopes and dreams. I wanted Esther to have her own silk and I wanted Sara to be safe and happy. Their story was tragic, though. But the way it ended made a lot of sense and I was satisfied by it.
In all, this book did just go a lot deeper than I expected it to. I was really glad, because it was interesting to see all the issues laid out and the characters dealing with them. The book showed people with realistic faults, when it would have been so easy to have good characters and bad character, although there are some very, very bad characters. It showed that everyone makes mistakes.
I'm really happy to have read this book,
My thanks go to Netgalley and Quercus for providing me with this copy for review.
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