The Time In Between - The Friday 56 and Book Beginnings on Friday

The Time In Between by Maria Dueñas has it all - mystery, intrigue, history, exotic settings, romance, and a strong female protagonist, set in the years leading up to World War II. This book grabbed me and wouldn't let go!
     As someone who sews as a hobby, I also enjoyed reading about the main character's profession as a seamstress and the styles women wore during that era. The author lists an extensive bibliography at the end of the book, which tells me she did a mountain of research. It shows in the detail. I highly recommend this book.
FYI: Billed as "Spain's Downton Abbey", the book was made into a miniseries. Subtitled episodes are available on DramaFever and Hulu's Drama Fever Channel. 

Book Beginning:
     A typewriter shattered my destiny. The culprit was a Hispano-Olivetti, and for weeks, a store window kept it from me. Looking back now, from the vantage point of the years gone by, it's hard to believe a simple mechanical object could have the power to divert the course of an entire life in just four short days, to pulverize the intricate plans on which it was built. And yet that is how it was, and there was nothing I could have done to stop it.

The Friday 56 (two sentences from Page 56 in my trade paperback):
     I discovered that there are substances you can smoke or inject or snort that will jumble your senses, that there are people capable of gambling away their mother at a baccarat table, and that there are passions of the flesh that allow for far more combinations than just those of a man and a woman horizontally on a mattress. I learned, too, that there are things that happen in the world that my dim education had never touched upon: I found out that years earlier there had been a great war in Europe, that Germany was being ruled by someone called Hitler who was admired by some and feared by others, and that someone who one day occupied a given place with a feeling of permanence could the following day vanish in order to save his skin, to avoid being beaten to death or ending up in a place worse than his darkest nightmare.

Genre: Historical Fiction / World Literature (Spanish & Portuguese)
Book Length: 609 Pages
Amazon Link: The Time In Between



Synopsis:
     The Time In Between is a word-of-mouth phenomenon that catapulted María Dueñas, a debut author, to the top of Spain's bestseller lists.
     This sweeping novel, which combines the storytelling power of The Shadow of the Wind with the irresistible romance of Casablanca, moves at an unstoppable pace. Suddenly left abandoned and penniless in Morocco by her lover, Sira Quiroga forges a new identity. Against all odds she becomes the most sought-after couture designer for the socialite wives of German Nazi officers. But she is soon embroiled in a dangerous political conspiracy as she passes information to the British Secret Service through a code stitched into the hems of her dresses.

                

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