The Grand Hotel Slowly Reveals Her Secrets
Walk through Doors to the Past via a new series of historical stories of romance and adventure.
Two successful women, a hundred-and-twenty-years apart, build walls to protect their hearts. Modern-day Willa, a successful interior decorator, is chosen to go to Mackinac Island and consult for the Grand Hotel’s possible redesign. During work on a room, she discovers a journal detailing the struggles of a young woman, Lily—which reveals dark secrets. The renowned singer wasn’t who she pretended to be.
As Willa reaches out to Lily’s descendant, a charismatic and prominent landscape artist, she lets down her guard. Should she share the journal with him—revealing hidden history—or once again erect a wall as she struggles to redesign both the Grand and her life?
CARRIE FANCETT PAGELS, Ph.D., awarding-winning author of over twenty Christian fiction books, is a former psychologist of 25 years and enjoys spending her summers at the Straits of Mackinac, where this story is set.
-
Sexual Content - 0/5
0/5
-
Violence - 1/5
1/5
-
Language - 0/5
0/5
-
Drugs and Alcohol - 0/5
0/5
Summary
From: Rebecca Maney
Book Title: Behind Love's Walls
Book Author: Carrie Fancett Pagels
What do you like about this book:
2.5 stars
" . . . . what if someone as talented and lovely as you had never come into this world because her mother had gone insane?"
Lily Swaine; her recently assumed stage name already had a ring of truth about it deep, deep down in the recesses of her memory, but for now it would allow Lily and her cousin Clem to start over once again. Deemed a "songbird" by the patrons of the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, Lily was thankful for such plush summer employment, thanks to the recommendation from the kind Dr. DuBlanc. Michigan was a long way from Kentucky or even Virginia, but soon Lily was going to realize that it was a journey worth making in many more ways than one.
Decades later, another young woman steps foot on Mackinac for entirely different reasons, although Willa Christy had more in common with Lily than she could have possibly foreseen. After reading portions of Miss Swaine's journal found tucked away in the design project Willa and her business partner had begun on hotel property, it became apparent that the island's ancestry had very deep roots, allowing both young women to finally "belong".
Being drawn into one story line more than the other is a frequent hazard in split-time novels; unfortunately, this one struggles for appropriate balance and smooth transitions. On the positive side, it reads like a travel brochure for Mackinac Island and the plot approaches maladies of the mind and emotion with great care and sensitivity, leaving an example for readers to follow. Above all, it serves as a reminder that our true Father is One who never disappoints, or leaves or forsakes; the kind of love that never hides behind walls.
"Lily was accepted for herself. Satan's lies, which had followed her for years, would not prevail. . . . she'd found her way home. With God's help, she could overcome the past and start anew."