Cover image from Goodreads.com

Adora Hazzard studied Stoicism and lends her teachings to a wealthy family; a husband who lost a limb and is partially paralyzed and his twin children. Through this job she meets Digby, falls in love, and is involved in an international art recovery.

I felt misled with the novel. It started with Adora wanting to create a coven of women, all living on the same floor in her swanky building, the Ansonia. This, to me, would have been an excellent book. Women developing a network of pooled income, resource sharing, and companionship as they age.

Instead, the book takes a turn and the Adora of the first third doesn’t seem to be the same Adora as the second third. In the first one, I’d actually questioned whether she was some kind of God or alien (I resolutely didn’t read the dust cover before beginning, instead I like to see where the narrative takes me) who just looks like this woman. But in the second third we get a glimpse of her life thirty years ago with events that led her to study philosophy.

While engaging – the narrative does move things along nicely – I kept wanting to know more about this coven. But it was as if the author just wanted to make Adora look like she wanted a network of women but would abandon the whole thing for a man who made her knees weak.

Not a bad novel, it was entertaining enough, but frustrating because I really would like to read something about women forming a community like a coven.