Title: The Girls at the Kingfisher Club
Author: Genevieve Valentine
ASIN: B00GEEYWEG
ISBN: 978-1476739083
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
First Published: 3 June 2014 (Kindle) / 24 June 2014 (audio) / 3 July 2014 (hardback)
No .of pages: 289
Rating: 4/5
Synopsis (from Amazon):
Jo, the firstborn, “The General” to her eleven sisters, is the only thing the Hamilton girls have in place of a mother. She is the one who taught them how to dance, the one who gives the signal each night, as they slip out of the confines of their father’s townhouse to await the cabs that will take them to the speakeasy. Together they elude their distant and controlling father, until the day he decides to marry them all off.
The girls, meanwhile, continue to dance, from Salon Renaud to the Swan and, finally, the Kingfisher, the club they come to call home. They dance until one night when they are caught in a raid, separated, and Jo is thrust face-to-face with someone from her past: a bootlegger named Tom whom she hasn’t seen in almost ten years. Suddenly Jo must weigh in the balance not only the demands of her father and eleven sisters, but those she must make of herself.
Review:
This slick reimagining of the fairytale of the Twelve Dancing Princesses plunges the enigmatic sisters into the heady world of flappers, jazz music, and prohibition era New York City, and it couldn’t have worked better.
The captive heroines are each given their own distinct character, and their story is interwoven with illegal booze, shady dames, even shadier men, and the smoky, mysterious atmosphere of underground clubs. The desperation of the girls drips from every page, and their plight of being held virtual prisoners by a domineering father they never see, makes their precarious little freedoms all the more frenetic.
It retains the fairytale qualities of beautiful damsels in distress (even if the damsels in question are more than capable of taking care of themselves), and help from the most unlikely of quarters. It’s an interesting update on a classic tale, and it doesn’t drag on too long before hitting you with a payoff worthy of The Brothers Grimm – I think they would have approved with how Valentine has handled their original story.
Reviewed by Kell Smurthwaite
BCF Book Reviews 