The Nature of Fragile Things

Title: The Nature of Fragile Things 

Author: Susan Meissner

Source: own

My Review:

I have had The Nature of Fragile Things on my shelf for several years. After reading it, I regret letting it sit there so long!

You guys, I loved this book. Sophie had my heart and my sympathies for why she decided to marry Martin Hocking, basically being a mail-order bride. I also felt for Kat (Martin's daughter), whose whole world has been rocked.

When people are thrown into an abyss and together find their way out of it, they are not the same people. They are bound to one another ever after, linked together at the core of who they are because it was together that they escaped a terrible fate.

While I was reading, I was like, oh, this is what is going to happen, and then it did. But, it was SO much more than I thought it was. This book had so many layers to it, and by the end I was completely gob smacked. I did not see that coming.

What I loved:

• found family
• Sophie's loyalty and caring spirit
• Sophie's backbone (so unexpected)
• forgiveness in the midst of hard situations
• the mystery
• secrets revealed (so many!)
• the entire storyline!  

I highly recommend this story to anyone who enjoys historical fiction, with a mystery and many layers! I was invested from the beginning and found the book hard to put down.

★★★★★/5

Synopsis (Goodreads):  

April 18, 1906: A massive earthquake rocks San Francisco just before daybreak, igniting a devouring inferno. Lives are lost, lives are shattered, but some rise from the ashes forever changed.

Sophie Whalen is a young Irish immigrant so desperate to get out of a New York tenement that she answers a mail-order bride ad and agrees to marry a man she knows nothing about. San Francisco widower Martin Hocking proves to be as aloof as he is mesmerizingly handsome. Sophie quickly develops deep affection for Kat, Martin's silent five-year-old daughter, but Martin's odd behavior leaves her with the uneasy feeling that something about her newfound situation isn't right.

Then one early-spring evening, a stranger at the door sets in motion a transforming chain of events. Sophie discovers hidden ties to two other women. The first, pretty and pregnant, is standing on her doorstep. The second is hundreds of miles away in the American Southwest, grieving the loss of everything she once loved.

The fates of these three women intertwine on the eve of the devastating earthquake, thrusting them onto a perilous journey that will test their resiliency and resolve and, ultimately, their belief that love can overcome fear.

From the acclaimed author of The Last Year of the War and As Bright as Heaven comes a gripping novel about the bonds of friendship and mother love, and the power of female solidarity.