It’s Fiction Friday, and today I wanted to tell you about a book that I really enjoyed last week. It’s also summertime, so that means that I’m a little late posting. Whoops! Who knew it was already Friday?

The Writing Desk continues in the line of split time novels that Rachel has written like The Wedding Dress and The Wedding Shop. In that vein, it carries two stories through to connection. In the contemporary story, Tenley Roth feels like a one hit wonder who is desperate to find her next plot, but nothing is working. Nothing. Then her estranged mother asks for help, and her fiance leaves for Paris…without her. In the Gilded Age plot, Birdie Shehorn is under the tight control of her mother, who cares more for status than for her daughter’s happiness. The book is a smooth blending of the two plots until they overlap in several ways.

The Writing Desk is filled with the author’s trademark interesting characters inflicted with complex motivations and goals. The Gilded Age plot may have been my favorite simply because Tenley’s struggles to write reflected my writing life. 🙂 Birdie is fighting for her freedom and the independence to marry for love. She knows who she is and who she isn’t and has to choose to fight for that, the exact opposite of Tenley, who has no idea who she is. The heroines are two coins of the same coin. Both wrote for healing, and both shared a desk. You should read the book to see how else their lives intertwine.

This is dual-story romance that will delight romance readers whether they love historical novels or contemporary.

Here’s more:

Tenley Roth’s first book was a runaway bestseller. Now that her second book is due, she’s locked in fear. Can shepeat her earlier success or is she a fraud who has run out of inspiration?

With pressure mounting from her publisher, Tenley is weighted with writer’s block. But when her estranged mother calls asking Tenley to help her through chemotherapy, she packs up for Florida where she meets handsome furniture designer Jonas Sullivan and discovers the story her heart’s been missing.

A century earlier, another woman wrote at the same desk with hopes and fears of her own. Born during the Gilded Age, Birdie Shehorn is the daughter of the old money Knickerbockers. Under the strict control of her mother, her every move is decided ahead of time, even whom she’ll marry. But Birdie has dreams she doesn’t know how to realize. She wants to tell stories, write novels, make an impact on the world. When she discovers her mother has taken extreme measures to manipulate her future, she must choose between submission and security or forging a brand new way all on her own.

Tenley and Birdie are from two very different worlds, but fate has bound them together in a way time cannot erase.