Award-winning author Iona Grey’s next unforgettable historical about true love found and lost and the secrets we keep from one another Selina Lennox is a Bright Young Thing. Her life is a whirl of parties and drinking, pursued by the press and staying on just the right side of scandal, all while running from the life her parents would choose for her. Lawrence Weston is a penniless painter who … Weston is a penniless painter who stumbles into Selina’s orbit one night and can never let her go even while knowing someone of her stature could never end up with someone of his. Except Selina falls hard for Lawrence, envisioning a life of true happiness. But when tragedy strikes, Selina finds herself choosing what’s safe over what’s right.
Spanning two decades and a seismic shift in British history as World War II approaches, Iona Grey’s The Glittering Hour is an epic novel of passion, heartache and loss.
“An absorbing tale of love, loss, and the ties that bind… A sweeping historical saga that captures the desires and dilemmas of the heart.” — Booklist
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The Glittering Hour positively drips with romance, Jazz Age glamour, and long buried family secrets, but it also packs a punch. Grey has given us a poignant tale of love thrown away and love reclaimed, reminding us that it’s never too late to embrace the call of the heart. All of this and gorgeously evocative prose too, wrapped up with a heart wrenching finish that will have you reaching for the tissues, but I promise it’s worth EVERY single tear. I can’t reccoment this beutiful book enough. (I’ve already gone back to page one to reread)
The Glittering Hour by Iona Grey Historical Fiction in early 20th Century England between World War I and World War II. Selina and Lawrence have an unusual story to tell that no one should miss. A story of people, love, happiness and sorrow that is a part of life and our memories. A beautiful and unforgettable book that will touch many hearts. I absolutely loved it.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from Netgalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. I appreciate the opportunity and thank the author and publisher for allowing me to read, enjoy and review this book. 5 Stars
The Glittering Hour is told through two timelines. Selina Lennox’s story, who as one of the Bright Young People in the 1920s, partied hard, shocking society at that time but determined to live life to the full after the horrors and loss of the First World War. We discover her hopes and dreams for her future and about the night she met Lawrence, the poor, talented artist who has such an impact on her life.
Through Alice’s story in the 1930s, we see how the nine-year-old struggles to cope with life at her grandparents’ cold, oppressive home while her mother and father are away travelling. How, to help Alice cope without her, Selina writes letters to her daughter sending her on a treasure hunt. With each letter and each clue Alice discovers more about her mother’s past.
I’ve read many books, but it’s been a very long time since one has affected me as much as The Glittering Hour. This is a captivating, epic read, with enthralling characters whose stories kept me fascinated and broke my heart in equal measure. I can’t recommend this book enough.
I just finished. It’s definitely a slow build, but it’s so worth it. A beautiful story. I needed a few tissues towards the end. 5
This was one of those books that was impossible to put down. Beautifully written, I loved it!
Song/s the book brought to mind: My Heart Will Go On by Celine Dion
For me, The Glittering Hour by Iona Grey can be perfectly described in one word: beautiful. I loved the story and I’m so sad it had to come to an end.
The story of Selina and Lawrence broke my heart, but I loved it all the same and I especially enjoyed the dual timelines. The mid-1920s timeline is told mostly from Selina’s perspective, and the mid-1930s timeline is mostly told from her nine-year-old daughter Alice’s. I don’t always love reading from a child’s perspective, but I enjoyed it in this book, and it doesn’t actually spend too much time from her POV. I wasn’t sure about the synopsis of the book, but the cover drew me in and I’m so glad it did. The Glittering Hour is an amazing and moving story that is for sure to make you tear up, if not bawl.
I loved the flow of The Glittering Hour and it is a beautifully written novel. I think you can kind of figure out where the plot is going but that didn’t take away from the book for me at all. I do think this is best read as opposed to doing the audio which is something I mostly never say. I loved the narrator, Imogen Church, but that was really the extent of what I liked. I don’t know if it had to do with where it was recorded or what, but the audio wasn’t consistent at all. It would be loud and then quiet, and the entire time I listened to it I had to almost have it on max volume to hear what was being said. It was also a little confusing with the different narrators without always having a chapter break, so I think reading the physical copy is the way to go with this one.
The Glittering Hour has both forbidden love and loss at the center of the story, and it will rip your heart right out. This is a slow-burn and a book that I would love to savor if I were reading it again for the first time. It would be best to take your time with and really enjoy if you can! Some of the things that the men say made me angry, and this book will definitely give you all the feels. I don’t know why I haven’t read anything by Grey before, but I definitely will be reading everything I can get my hands on now.
Thank you to the publisher for providing me with an advance review copy of this book, all opinions and thoughts are my own.
I loved Iona Grey’s debut, Letters to the Lost, and couldn’t wait to read this one. It’s a beautifully written book, with a seamless flow between the two timelines—1925 and 1936. The story of star-crossed lovers appealed to the hopeless romantic in me and I have a feeling it will stay with me for quite a while. The Glittering Hour was well worth the wait!
Oh my goodness, this book!
I adored Iona Grey’s first book (Letters to the Lost) so I was excited to read this one. I was completely absorbed into the worlds of Alice and Selina from the the start. I ended up reading into the small hours of the morning, because I couldn’t bear to stop.
The book starts with Alice, whose miserable life at her grandmother’s house is enlivened by letters from her mother, Selina, and a treasure hunt which promises to tell her Selina’s story. We find out things about Selina’s life as Alice uncovers clues. Selina, a Bright Young Thing when she was in her early twenties, is glamorous and exciting – with drinks and parties and games galore. During one of those parties, she meets the down at heel artist Lawrence Weston and falls in love …. but we know she doesn’t end up married to him.
The story has a twist which makes an already emotional story extra poignant. The writing is beautiful, the story and characters are completely absorbing. I was a weepy wreck by the end. I love, love, loved it. This is one of the best books I’ve read all year.
Mesmerizing, enthralling, and incredibly moving!
The Glittering Hour is set in London and the English countryside during 1925, as well as 1936, and is told from two different perspectives. Selina, a young woman in her prime who often finds herself and her friends gracing the pages of the gossip rags for their outrageous behaviour and antics, and Alice Carew, Selina’s nine-year-old daughter who after being relegated to her grandparents country home while her parents are abroad embarks on a treasure hunt to discover all her mother’s secrets.
The prose is eloquent and vivid. The characters are creative, intelligent, and rebellious. And the plot, including all the subplots, unravel and intertwine into a sweeping saga of life, loss, family, expectations, sacrifice, self-discovery, friendship, heartbreak, romance, forbidden love, and the special bonds shared between a mother and daughter.
Overall, The Glittering Hour is a bittersweet, beautifully expressive, exceptionally affecting story by Grey that illuminates the enduring passion and power of unconditional love and reminds us that life should always be lived to the fullest. It’s immersive, vibrant, and utterly heartwrenching in spots, and is without a doubt one of my favourite reads of the year.
I was captivated by the blurb of The Glittering Hour. The impression I from the blurb is that it was going to be a sweeping romance. While it was that, it was so much more.
The Glittering Hour got off to a slow start but morphed into a fast-paced, heartbreaking book. There was no lag to the plotline. There were also no dropped characters or storylines.
I am not the biggest fan of the dual plotline books. I can’t keep track of going on. Not the case in The Glittering Hour. The author made sure that I knew what year (aka character) I was reading. Even the characters that had smaller roles (like the governess or the gardener) were clearly labeled. I had no issue following along.
I wasn’t the biggest fan of Selina when I first started reading her half of the book. She came across as spoiled. But, as the author got more into her backstory, I understood why she acted the way she did. I believe that is why she was so attracted to Lawrence. He gave her a sense of belonging that she didn’t get from her family. Her love for Alice was evident through the letters she wrote to her and Alice’s memories.
I felt awful for Alice. She was living with people who resented her presence. Her grandmother treated her awfully. She was so cold. It was painfully obvious when her younger cousin came for a visit, and he was indulged. I wanted to reach through the book and hug her; I felt that bad for her. My heart broke even more for her towards the end of the book.
I liked Lawrence, but I thought he fell for Selina too quickly. In an era where social and economic status were still barriers, I knew that he didn’t have a chance with her. I was mentally chanting, “Don’t fall in love, don’t fall in love.” But he did, and it was wonderfully sad.
There were a couple of twists in the storyline that took me by surprise. The one that involved Alice, I saw coming. But the other one blew me away. I didn’t see that one coming at all. When it was revealed, I had to put down my Kindle and take a minute to process it. I should have known something was up when Flick made an appearance!!!
The end of The Glittering Hour had me sobbing my eyes out. From the minute both twists were revealed, I was crying. What a way to end a book!!
Welcome To The Roaring Twenties. As I finish this book a couple of weeks late – yet appropriately just hours before the Roaring Twenties come back – I’m actually thankful I wasn’t able to complete it sooner due to various traveling I was doing in the early parts of this month. Because this book is a phenomenal look at the Roaring Twenties, young adult disillusionment in their twenties generally, and the realities we sometimes face in our thirties. But it is also extremely tragic, and without actually giving anything away let’s just say be prepared to bawl for the last 100 pages or so of this 400 page book. Truly an excellent work, and very much recommended.
Favorite Quotes:
Blackwood Park was full of ghosts. Its empty corridors echoed with the whispers of lost voices and snatches of old laughter. It was a house where the past felt more vivid than the present, which was nothing more than a stretch of endless days fading into uniform blankness.
… there was a bowl of paperwhite daffodils on the table by her armchair. Their delicate perfume was fresh in a room that smelled of stopped clocks and old paper.
I resented the rules and restrictions and the rigidness … The hypocrisy and control… Their favourite punishment was to withhold food, and I resented being sent to bed hungry while downstairs seven courses were being served in the dining room and people were only picking at each of them. And the more resentful I was the naughtier I became and the more I was punished… I spent my childhood feeling permanently ravenous.
Don’t you be shy about ringing the bell or going down to find her if it doesn’t appear –she’s got a head like a sieve, that one. Not that I imagine she’ll have much time for daydreaming today. Miss Lovelock’s had her up and down like a fiddler’s elbow already this morning, fetching tea and toast and hot water cans and whatnot.
‘Someone once told me that a woman’s body is like a piano. It’s up to the man whether he chooses to pick out a nursery rhyme with one finger, or learn how to play a symphony. I suppose that was the first movement’… ‘I’m terribly ignorant about culture,’ she whispered. ‘Remind me – how many movements are there in a symphony?’
Secrets and half-truths seemed to swirl through the corridors on icy currents of air.
My Review:
This was a feast of a book. The Glittering Hour was thoughtfully written and cunningly insightful as well as shrewdly observant. It was a slowly evolving and highly emotive story that was skillfully crafted and elegantly told, and I absorbed it as if it were being injected straight into my gray matter while vivid imagery flickered behind my eyes. There were four-hundred-eighty beautifully written pages and I read them ever so slowly as I wanted to savor each perfectly chosen word, even though the storylines turned me inside out, stung my eyes, pinched my heart, and put hot rocks in my throat. Iona Grey is found treasure and a new addition at the very top of my list of favorite authors.
The Glittering Hour is a beautifully written, tragic love story set in England in 1920-30s. Selina Lennox comes from a privileged, noble family, she spends her days and nights partying with her wealthy friends. Lawrence Weston is a struggling photographer, who supplements his income by painting portraits. Their lives are vastly different, they move in different circles, but one night their paths unexpectedly collide and change both Selina and Lawrence forever. What follows is a story of a star-crossed and forbidden affair between Selina and Lawrence, that will reverberate through their existence for the next decade.
The Glittering Hour is a tear-jerker, the book that will move you and stay with you long after you finish reading it. I recommend it to any reader with a romantic soul and a weakness for star-crossed love stories.
THE GLITTERING HOUR by Iona Grey
Story of Alice, a young girl who is sent to live with her grandmother as her parents are traveling for work.
Her dad has a ruby mine and he’s gone to see what the problems are. Selina her mother accompanied him.
Love that Alice has Polly to help with the treasure hunt-I set something up similar for my young cousins who I was babysitting, so fun!
Mr. Patterson is a treasure as he teaches her so much and about cool things.
She learns one day so devastating news about her mother and she runs away. She had only wanted to see her mother…
Selina’s past is played out in front of our eyes with the treasure hunt game that others set up. So deceiving that they couldn’t tell the child the real reason why her mother was where she was…
Glad to hear about her real father and how he finds out and so many other secrets.
She has a bond with the Chinese house and she holds on to that and other things sent to her from her mother.
So heartbreaking and so loving at the same time. Ends with acknowledgements, about the author, other works by the author.
Received this review copy via the Publicist at St. Martin’s Press via Netgalley and this is my honest opinion.
#TheGlitteringHour #NetGalley
The Glittering Hour by Iona Grey is a stunning, tearfully, gut-wrenching historical fiction that is a dual timeline but weaves into one at the end. This is an impressive and ingenious novel that weaves a story slowly spun, but spirals to the satisfying and touching conclusion.
This story mainly weaves the loves of Alice and her mother, Selina, and tells a bittersweet story of love, loss, redemption, and finding one another against the odds and years. The puzzle pieces slowly fit together as the story continues onward, but not in chronological lines. The result is truly a masterpiece.
The three things I love most about this book: the imagery that the author creates for the reader is breathtaking, you feel as if you are actually there. Second, is placing the narrative with other characters as well. We get to see the inner thoughts of Selina’s mother, Polly, Lawrence, Rupert, Mr Patterson, etc. Every character gets their turn, its ingenious. Lastly, I love the ending. It is just perfect. Nothing else could have possibly been appropriate.
5/5 stars. Stunning.
I was a little intimidated by the length of this book and all the characters when I started it, but it flowed right along and was not confusing. The story starts out in 1926 in Blackwood Park and focuses on Selina Lennox and her other wealthy friends who are focused on partying and doing outlandish things which always ends up on the society pages of the newspaper. The story then switches to 1936 and focuses on Alice, Selina’s 9-year-old daughter who goes to stay with her grandparents in Blackwood Park while her mother and father go to Burma to deal with his business. The story alternates between those two time periods with a lot of very interesting story lines and family dynamics. I really enjoyed this book and I highly recommend it. Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the ARC of this dynamic family saga in exchange for an honest review.
Iona Grey’s The Glittering Hour is an engrossing historical fiction set in the post WWI England. The author delicately laces her story of love and loss with history. This is not a heavy-handed history lesson, but appropriate mentions of significant events during that era are mentioned to provide character backstory and motivations.
The Glittering Hour takes place in 1935. When nine-year-old Alice’s mother, Selina, leaves her with her stoic grandmother, she writes her daughter letters giving her scavenger hunt clues that will illuminate Alice’s start in life. Through flashbacks, the reader learns of young Selina as a 1925 flapper. Her flamboyant lifestyle of drinking, smoking and partying shows off Ms. Grey’s writing and researching. I could really sense Selina and her friends’ boozy, smoky lifestyle. They’re bored and bourgeois. They’re frightened by the heightened awareness of their own mortality as a result of WWI and the Spanish Influenza Epidemic. Selina’s glittery life in 1925 juxtapose to the decaying family estate where her daughter lives in 1935 really shows how the war has affected everyone.
Outwardly, Selina appears to be confident and bold, but she is hiding from her childhood insecurities and her fear of losing another loved one. The extent of her family’s dysfunction is more evident with each layer peeled away. Like every young woman in the era, family expectations trump one’s own desires; after all, one needs safety and security as well as social acceptability. When Selina finds love, she must choose between a soul mate and stability.
The family secrets and story denouement are easily-enough determined early in the story, but the novel is no less interesting for it. I loved the perfect twist in Lawrence Weston’s life as well as the evocative descriptions of the characters and settings. Ms. Grey’s storytelling is marvelous and her characters are captivating. The Glittering Hour is a delicious read for lovers of historical fiction and romance.
4.5 stars
3.5 stars
I don’t read a lot of historical fiction, let alone historical romance, but the setting and time period of The Glittering Hour caught my attention. This is a love story, but even more than that, it’s the story of a mother and daughter and their bond. The story is told in dual timelines, and while that doesn’t always work for me, the author handles it quite seamlessly, and it’s easy to get lost in the atmosphere of the story. That said, this one does have some serious lag time in the beginning, but the second part of the book certainly makes up for it. This is not a story full of action, but it does have a forward momentum that kept me reading. I loved the connection between mother and daughter, and I was as interested in learning about how Alice came to be as she was. Overall, it’s a wonderful story of love and loss with engaging characters and one of my favorite time periods in history. The wild and carefree Selina fits in perfectly with what we think of when the ’20s are mentioned, and even though she lives in a different time, the author still made her relatable. This one may have been a bit out of my wheelhouse, and those lags in the first half could’ve used some going over, but it is most certainly worth the read.
A wonderful book! It’s beautifully written and the characters were thoroughly engaging. I loved it even though it made me cry! Highly recommended.
Iona Grey, author of “The Glittering Hour” has written an emotional, intense, captivating, and intriguing novel. The Genre for “The Glittering Hour” is Historical Fiction. The story takes place in England. The timeline for this story” spans” over two decades, and takes place just around World War Two. There are two storylines, the past and the author’s present that merge together, like pieces of a puzzle fitting together. The author describes her characters as complex and complicated. Some are selfish and self-centered. There are deep, dark secrets that can change everything for all of the characters.
The themes in this novel are choices and consequences, mother, daughter, sister relationships, communication, family, friends, love, loss, and hope. I would suggest having a box of Kleenex nearby.
Alice is a young girl who is staying with her opinionated and intolerant Grandmother while her mother and father are away. Polly, Alice’s Nanny is a wonderful friend and support for Alice. Polly mails Alice’s letters to her mother, who sends back clues to a treasure hunt in the house.
Going back to the past, we meet Selina, Alice’s mother as a young lady. Selina is daring and fun-loving and is friends with an elite group of friends. Of course, Selina doesn’t like to follow any of the rules set by her mother. (Alice’s Grandmother). There are a few times that the group gets into trouble. Selina reminds me of a person who is ” footloose and fancy-free”. She really doesn’t give too much thought to what she does. Selina does meet a photographer, Lawrence Weston, who barely can make a living. Both Selina and Lawrence come from different financial worlds, wealth vs. poverty.
There are twists and turns, deep dark secrets, and shocking surprises in this novel. Some choices that are made have heartbreaking consequences. These are really difficult choices. One question that does come from this story, is what is love? I would highly recommend this thought-provoking story for readers who enjoy Historical Fiction.