📖Novel of the Week: The Gown (A Novel of the Royal Wedding) by Jennifer Robson

From Audrey Hepburn's long, black Givenchy dress in "Breakfast at Tiffany" and Marilyn Monroe's white, flowy dress in "The Seven Year Itch" to the emerald green one Kiera Knightley wears in "Atonement" and Kate Hudson's gold one in "How to lose a guy in 10 days", some dresses are simply timeless and made history, whether they were in movies or real life. 
If you add that to the dress a girl is supposed to wear only once, there you have it: the immortal dress!

London, 1947
Ann Hughes is a young woman working as an embroiderer at Norman Hartnell's boutique, in London. She started her apprenticeship there before the war and loves her job; she's also a quiet and loyal person.
Miriam Dassin is French and arrived only recently in England, where she feels a bit out of space, but she's determined to make a life for her there and doesn't lose hope when she can't find a job. She has been working as an embroiderer since she was 14 years old and will eventually start to work at Mr. Hartnell's as well.
Within a few months, Mr. Hartnell announces he has been commissioned with Princess Elizabeth's wedding dress and all the workers have to maintain the absolute silence about its design.
In the following weeks Ann and Miriam, who in the meantime have become friends, both meet someone special and, even if they're both cautious, they start to look at the future with a bright prospective...

Toronto, 2016
Canadian editor Heather Mackenzie didn't have a good month: her always energetic, beloved grandmother Ann suddenly died and, to add insult to injure, she has been fired from her job at a magazine. But it's actually a good thing, so she can focus on the box Ann has left with her name on it: inside she found some very old embroidered flowers samples, but her grandmother was not able to sew, let alone manage to do a very complicated and delicate work like that...or could she?

👍👎My Thoughts

My own grandmother was a seamstress herself and she lived during war time (not in England or France, but in Italy), so reading this book brought back a lot of memories and I could actually found similarities between her stories and the one told here.
That said, the research work is detailed and very well assembled, the fiction and historical parts fit together flawlessly like puzzle pieces  and I soon found myself with a "can't-put-it-down" kind of book.

Similar Books

My review of The Dressmaker (the movie) HERE

My vote: 9/10

Ph: goodreads.com