The Jewel Box by Anna Davis

[chesilbeach]

Synopsis (from amazon.co.uk):

Grace Rutherford is the one and only Diamond Sharp, the 'It' girl of 1920s London, whose weekly newspaper column delights readers with tales of her nightly escapades: the dinners, the dancing, the hairdos, the fashion, the men...

 

Caught up in the glitz and glamour of the day, Grace begins a passionate affair with charming, flirtatious American author Dexter O'Connell. Soon, though, she finds herself falling for John Cramer, the charismatic neighbour her widowed younger sister adores. Irresistably drawn to both men, Grace discovers that they are bitter enemies. As she becomes tangled up in the mesh of secrets and lies that binds them together, she must try to find out which man, if either, she can trust.

 

Review:

The Jewel Box is set in 1920s London, Grace is the older of the Rutherford sisters, and after the death of both her father and her sisters husband, she has taken on responsibility for the household for her mother Catherine, her sister Nancy and Nancy's two young children, Tilly and Felix. Not only is she a copywriter for an advertising company, she also moonlights as a society columnist, known only as Diamond Sharp, charming readers with her witty commentary on society and the London flapper scene. When she catches the eye of a flirtatious American author, they embark on a passionate affair, but she soon finds herself also drawn to her neighbour, another American, and is caught between the two men, who themselves have a shared past.

 

Davis's books are marketed firmly in the chick-lit arena, but I've found both to be much more that just light-hearted romantic comedies. This one looks at womens lives in the 1920s, post-Suffrage but still a male dominated society, and Grace is not only an educated working woman, but is also employed in the male worlds of advertising and journalism. (In fact, in the afterword, Davis explains that had Grace really been a columnist at this time, she would have been a pioneer, although there are instance of earlier female writers, but there were none in London at this time).

 

What I find refreshing, however, is that she manages to write about the issues and lives of women of the time without preaching or judgement, and weaves it effortlessly into the story so that you almost don't realise you've learned something about the society of the era. Therefore, you still get the charming romance between Grace and O'Connell, along with the sparkling, witty columns of Diamond Sharp, and a cracking good story along the way.

 

Delicious!