The Dressmaker's Dowry

If only this novel has been written differently, my review rating my be more favorable. The overall content of the story was simply amazing but what really devalued it for me, was the sexual content and profanity. Unfortunately that didn't happen til more than half way through the book. Oh how I wish I could give it more but based on the standards and review ratings I established, I can't and still remain true to my reviews as well as my own personal ethics and integrity.

The Dressmaker's Dowry by Meredith Jaeger is a duality novel meaning that it revolves around two very different characters and each chapter toggles between both time frames, past and present and those characters point of views which we find out much later on, tie in quite uniquely to one another in a unusual manner I didn't see coming.

The setting for the novel is both San Francisco, both in the early 1870's as well as present day. For Sarah Havensworth, who is married but hiding a long dark secret from her husband Hunter, she hopes to some day have her novel published and one her husband whole-heartily supports. She now uncovers some details while researching ideas for her writers block which open up the investigative side of her journalists heart. So she switches gears to follow up on the missing dressmakers who lived in the same part of town she lives in, who apparently people believed might have been murdered. As she begins to unravel the lives of Hannalore Schaeffer and Margaret O'Brien, the missing dressmakers, she begins to uncover a more sinister secret that someone wants to be keep buried at all costs and will stop at nothing to ensure that Sarah gives up any further pursuit.

For Hannalore or Hanna, as she is referred to in the novel finds that working in the dressmaker's shop helps her meet a deeper goal. To escape an abusive father who believes that Hanna is holding out her money so he can spend it on alcohol and gambling. Now she knows she will do whatever it takes to rescue herself and her 3 siblings leave home and find a new life someplace else. For now she will simply do all she can to endure the abuse and keep whatever food she can on the table, even it if means she does without. But her life is about to change with Lucas Havensworth shows up to get his suits mended and runs quite literally into Hanna. From that point on, their lives will be forever changed in remarkable and sinister ways.

I received The Dressmaker's Dowry by Meredith Jaeger compliments of William Morrow, a division of Harper Collins Publishers. For me this was so well written about both women searching for something more than what their providential lives offered not realizing that in time they would be somehow connected. I love the passion that Sarah has to uncover the truth about what happened to Hanna and Margaret and to solve a century old cold case in the process. I just wish profanity and sexual content was eliminated because it would have made for a much better well received novel across a broader audience. The fact that these two elements exist call for me to give this a 3 out of 5 stars based on my own reviewers rating scale. If those items were removed, it would be a 5 out of 5 star novel!

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The Dressmaker's Dowry by Meredith Jaeger

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