“You can’t expect people to give you the things you love, unless you know how to ask.”
By 1927 there were twelve girls who danced all night and never gave names. By then, the men had already given up asking and called them all princess.
Jo, the oldest, is the closest thing the younger ones have to a mother. She taught them all to dance cobbling together lessons from the steps she saw at the movies. Jo makes sure the girls all make it out every night and she makes sure they make it back before their father knows they’re gone. That’s why she’s always been “The General.”
It’s not a good life or an easy one. But it seems like something they can all survive while they wait for something better. That is until their father decides to marry them off. Jo always feared they would have to escape their father’s townhouse but she didn’t realize they’d do so separated, with no resources, and no way to find each other again.
Jo is used to setting things aside to take care of her sisters. What she still has to figure out is how to make a life for herself as she tries to find them again in The Girls at the Kingfisher Club (2014) by Genevieve Valentine.
This standalone novel blends an evocative 1920s setting with an inventive retelling of The Twelve Dancing Princesses. The third person narration shifts between sisters with a primary focus on Jo and Lou, the second oldest, in electric prose that is replete with incisive observations and witty parenthetical asides.
Quick pacing, snappy writing, and hints of romance immediately draw readers into Jo and her sisters’ journey filled with both second chances and new beginnings.
The Girls at the Kingfisher Club is a story about agency, choice, and the difference between surviving and really living wrapped up in a jazzy retelling readers won’t soon forget. Highly recommended.
Possible Pairings: The Swans of Fifth Avenue by Melanie Benjamin; The Guest Book by Sarah Blake; The Diviners by Libba Bray; Next Year in Havana by Chanel Cleeton; Speak Easy, Speak Love by McKelle George; Button Man by Andrew Gross; The Museum of Extraordinary Things by Alice Hoffman; The World of Tomorrow by Brendan Mathews; Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi; China Dolls by Lisa See; Bachelor Girl by Kim Van Alkemade; The Wicked City by Beatriz Williams; Dust Girl by Sarah Zettel
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