I got about 4 chapters into this. I tried, I really did, because I love her writing.

But.

The gruesome details of terminal cancer: Had to stop reading, since I am just finishing my own advanced cancer treatment. I had no warning about this subject and it finally began giving me nightmares. Sorry, Ms. Hoffman. Cannot go there. ( )

Did not finish. Another story of rich people who don't know how to behave. I find it easier to give up on audiobooks than on print books, probably because I can't skim past the parts I'm not interested in. ( )

Another lyrical book from Hoffman. ( )

Alice Hoffman's writing never disappoints me. She wrote many books and I've read most of them. Spanning three generations, the story begins with two sisters. One who is about to get married in England, the other will be the bride's maid. Sadly, the groom has cancer and his life is short. The groom is the only child of Frieda who these years later has grown from a wayward young adult searching for something illusionary and is employed as a maid at the Lion Park Hotel. The Lion Park Hotel plays a major part throughout the book.

Now a conventional woman with a husband and son, Frieda's prayers are that her son will live. There are a host of characters and their lives weave in and out of each other. Alice Hoffman is a great writer who is quite capable of switching characters and paving the way for the reader to follow easily.

When young, Frieda rode in the car with her doctor father who told her he never knew if the first angel of life would ride with them, or the second angel death would follow. The Third Angel is the one who watches over. As the book description mentions, the story focuses on the girls and women who make choices that have a high cost, and thus the consequences are steep.

Highly recommended. ( )

What makes this book special is its composition, which is that the story is told going back in time. It made me want to read the book again, but then start with the last chapter, which is what happened first. It makes the story feel circular. It also shows that when we see the effects of what happened, we don't always interpret them accurately enough to determine the real cause. Hoffman could have used short flashbacks to tell this same story, but it would have had a completely different feeling, more that of an ordinary tale of romance gone wrong.

Alice Hoffman has great insight in human nature, and is good at describing the motivations a character has for his or her actions.

I thought that the biggest weakness was the large amount of similarities between the three stories: somebody dying of cancer, a wedding, and the main character ending up on the seventh floor of the, somewhat seedy, Lion Park Hotel. It made the story seem farfetched, contrived. It also made the plot harder to follow than it already was by going backward.

A good relaxing real which could have used a little more editing. ( )