Full review at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books 
 The 1920s aren't really my decade. I mean, they are, in the sense that I went through a period in my life where I was OBSESSED with Prohibition and the Mafia, and that lead me to the things I've spent most of my adult life studying, but the social history of the 1920s is not really something I've spent a lot of time with. Oh sure, I've watched Miss Fisher and I'm an avid (not ironic) Downton Abbey watcher, but it's not a period I know well. 
 What I've realized through watching Miss Fisher, and what this book reveals really well, is that the 1920s were a long, prolonged, PTSD episode for the world. Go fast, party hard, live it up, fuck the rules, because why does it matter? Everything has gone to shit. It will probably go to shit again. Even though Rachel, and the other Bright Young Things weren't old enough to be fighting in the war, they were coming of age during it, and they understand how hellish it was. They see how their elders (whether its their fathers, brothers, or friends) came back changed, and no one is talking about it. Even though the adult generation doesn't think they get it (like all older generations look down on the ones that come after them), they do understand how the world has fundamentally changed, and it did affect them as profoundly as it did the fighting generation. 
 The romance.... it was just sort of there? It wasn't really the focus, and I like Rachel and Simon, and I like them together. I think the strength of the book is in it's depiction of the time and place and in Rachel's identity struggle. The romance was used as the method to resolve things, not the focus of the story itself. That's fine, that didn't take away from my enjoyment at all. Knowing that Willig was considering a love triangle until she got words on the page and went "nope that's not happening" ...I don't think that would have worked well at all. 
 I like Willig's writing a lot. It's not complex; it's kind of like the hot chocolate of prose. It's smooth, and it's classic. That may sound kind of like damning with faint praise, which I'm really not trying to do. There are times when what I want is smooth prose without a lot of flourishes, and Willig always delivers. 
 - Redheadedgirl