A White Room by Stephanie Carroll
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I picked up this book because it sounded like it would have some paranormal elements, what with the furniture coming alive and the house trying to terrify the main character, Emmaline. It turns out the terror may just be hallucinations of a stressed mind, and the book threw me for a loop when it became an exploration of health care in the Victorian era Midwest. While I was disappointed that the house wasn’t really trying to kill Emma, and I was not expecting the story’s sort of abrupt turn to illegal nursing, the writing is well done and the story pulled me along. I’m a sucker for stories written in my home state, so it was fun to see what life was like in small-town Missouri. I couldn’t believe the sense of suffocation Emmaline deals with, and I’m very glad for my present-day life. Be aware that this book contains some trigger points for debate, such as abortion and assisted suicide, which were highly divisive in their day, but still seem topical in today’s political climate. Once the shift in story occurs, sometimes the characters can sound preachy, but the author manages not to shove any conclusions down the reader’s throat. The first bit of the book was a bit hard to get through, somewhat wordy and depressing, but once Emmaline returns to her now-illicit nursing career, the story moves along well. It’s easy to relate to her, and her interactions with her new hometown’s society ladies are believable in their all their sniping glory. I’m not much for historical fiction, but the author made this a believable excursion into a different time, and made me think a bit, so I was glad this was a book I could finish.
Received as a free digital ARC via Netgalley.