The Phoenix Crown ★★☆☆☆

Disappointing from one of my favorite authors.

The Phoenix Crown promised much: Kate Quinn, San Francisco, 1906, four women, an impending earthquake. In practice, it reads more like an extended description of the city than a story driven by it. Even when the earthquake strikes, it never lands with the force it should. For an event of that scale, the scene feels oddly muted.

The one thread that kept me reading was Suling and the portrait of life in Chinatown. Quinn captures something real there, the virulent hatred directed at the Chinese community, the blame, the branding, the daily indignity of it, and Suling navigates it with enough specificity to feel like an actual person rather than a plot function. The other three women's stories don't get the same treatment. They're competent but clichéd, and the novel never finds a way to make you care equally about all four.

The antagonist is the biggest letdown. Two stars on a two-star book should at least give you a villain worth the trouble. This one arrives at the climax feeling meek and underwritten, which deflates whatever tension Quinn had been building.

There's a line that stuck with me: "It wasn't enough for a woman to be talented, clever, or good. That wouldn't save her." It's sharp, and it belongs in a better book than this one.

Quinn has written books I've loved. This isn't one of them. Sometimes even good authors put out something that feels like a first draft of an idea they haven't fully worked out yet.

Edition Read

• Edition Type: Paperback
• Number of Pages: 384 pages
• Date First Published: February 13, 2024
• Publisher: HarperCollins GB
• ISBN10: 0008644551
• ASIN: 0008644551
• Language: English

Description

An unforgettable story about the intertwined lives of two wronged women, spanning from the chaos of the San Francisco earthquake to the glittering palaces of Versailles… San Francisco, 1906. In a city bustling with newly minted millionaires and scheming upstarts, two very different women hope to change their fortunes: Gemma, a golden-haired, silver-voiced soprano whose career desperately needs rekindling, and Suling, a petite and resolute Chinatown embroideress who is determined to escape an arranged marriage.

Their paths cross when they are drawn into the orbit of Henry Thornton, a charming railroad magnate whose extraordinary collection of Chinese antiques includes the fabled Phoenix Crown, a legendary relic of Beijing’s fallen Summer Palace.

His patronage offers Gemma and Suling the chance of a lifetime, but their lives are thrown into turmoil when a devastating earthquake rips San Francisco apart and Thornton disappears, leaving behind a mystery reaching further than anyone could have imagined . . .

Until the Phoenix Crown reappears five years later at a sumptuous Paris costume ball, drawing Gemma and Suling together in one last desperate quest for justice . . .

Source: GoodReads

Notable Highlights

“Business is boring. It exists to fund the things in life that matter.” [loc. 990]