Our Kind of People by Carol Wallace

 

Publisher: G P Putman's Sons

Publication date: January 11 2022

Pages: 368

This is a review of an ebook from Netgalley

In Our Kind of People, the reader steps into a time machine back into New York's gilded age of 1874. Step into the world of high society; Helen Wilcox is married to Joshua Wilcox. He is originally from a lower class then Helen, and even though there was resistance from Helen's mother to marry him, they have been together for many years and they have two teenage daughter's, Alice and Jeminawho are on the brink of coming out into the high society circles. Joshua is working at the railroad company that is developing the Elevated, the new elevated train tracks that are going to run through NYC soon, is the plan. But things are not going as planned and while the Wilcox family try hard to keep up appearances, money is getting tighter, because Joshua is lending money everywhere for the plans to start the Elevated, and it even goes so out of hand that the house of the Wilcox family is sold by forclosure by one of his men that he owes money to, and they have to movie in with Helen's mother. Will their live ever go back how it was now that they are out of the high society circles?

The cover and synopsis draw me to read th is book. Especially the first and middle parts of this book are the strongest, story-wise. In these parts it has drama and tension, and as a reader you slowly see the Wilcox family lives fall apart. That takes until the two last parts, where all of a sudden the Elevated is sold publicly and the fate of the family seems to turn. But I must say that part has so many loose ends until the end that it left me questioning what the outcome of it was for the Wilcox family, and the end felt very rushed. So I have mixed feelings about this book, although the first part truly where good, it is written beautifully and detailed, and everything perfectly fits in the 1874 time period. I only wanted to like it more then I did because the somewhat strange and rushed ending. A missed chance!