The Library of Lost Dollhouses

Yet another great premise, brought down by the author trying to do too much all at once.

Two points of view here: Tildy, librarian at a struggling archival library centered around historical figure Belva Curtis Lefarge in San Francisco, stumbles on a hidden room containing two intricate, beautiful dollhouses. In examining them, she discovers they both bear a monogram of their creator, and embarks on a quest to find out more about the mysterious 'CH'. We also have the past viewpoint of Cora Hale, newly arrived in Paris and on the run from what she left behind in America, she stays at a boarding house for artists and takes on clients in order to teach them how to paint and draw. The boarding house is owned by Belva Curtis Lefarge, who allows her to stay and also takes an interest in Cora's work. It's through Belva that Cora is introduced to her first set of miniatures, and from there she finds both her medium and her voice.

I thought the historical fiction story told through Cora's viewpoint was the more interesting of the two, but I thought it covered too much historical ground for me to really feel like I cared about what was going on. There's a mystery here about what the dollhouses are and why Tildy's mom is part of it, there's romance thrown in both Cora's and Tildy's viewpoints, there's historical fiction across two world wars and a meeting with Walt Disney, there's some tension thrown in about the fate of the archival library, there's just a lot going on here. Not helping things is that the characters -- literally all of them -- felt flat as cardboard. No real development happens, and by the end I just wanted to know what happened to the library more than I cared about Tildy throwing herself on her sword.

Idk, this book didn't do a whole lot for me. It's fine I guess, but I don't know if I'd recommend it strongly to anyone.