We follow a young lady named Lily starts off taking art at the Talland House. There she meets Louis and her friend Eliza.

Things are going well for Lily until war starts turning her life around. She finds herself in the nursing field. During this time she thinks about Louis to get herself through the hard time of war and realizing how much she misses him.

As war drags on Lily's love for Louis never fades even through the long hours of working at the hospital. One December was devastating as they were told the war supposed to end but it didn't. Lily found herself accepting the fact the war may never end and became a part of her life. Until one day the big announcement was made that war was officially over.

Lily finally got to see Louis. Instead of finding the true love of her life an unexpected twist in the end made Lily comes to terms with reality that even if things do not work out as she had planned, she came to find something more in life to accept to fill the whole she so longingly was finding to make her happy.

Such a charming story. I like a story that reminds people that it is ok to not find love but to find love in a different way to fill a whole in your life. You don't need love from a man to make you happy you can find other ways to fill the whole in your life to make yourself feel happy. I highly recommend this book. I gave this a 4 because there were certain times in the story that took me awhile to figure out what was going on but once I did I really enjoyed it. I especially loved the message at the end of the story.

This is a lovely book to be savored. The author explores issues of the early 1900s that women still experience today. After reading this I definitely want to re-read To the Lighthouse.

Title: Talland House
Author: Maggie Humm
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 3.8 out of 5

Royal Academy, London 1919: Lily has put her student days in St. Ives, Cornwall, behind her―a time when her substitute mother, Mrs. Ramsay, seemingly disliked Lily’s portrait of her and Louis Grier, her tutor, never seduced her as she hoped he would. In the years since, she’s been a suffragette and a nurse in WWI, and now she’s a successful artist with a painting displayed at the Royal Academy. Then Louis appears at the exhibition with the news that Mrs. Ramsay has died under suspicious circumstances. Talking to Louis, Lily realizes two things: 1) she must find out more about her beloved Mrs. Ramsay’s death (and her sometimes-violent husband, Mr. Ramsay), and 2) She still loves Louis.

Set between 1900 and 1919 in picturesque Cornwall and war-blasted London, Talland House takes Lily Briscoe from the pages of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse and tells her story outside the confines of Woolf’s novel―as a student in 1900, as a young woman becoming a professional artist, her loves and friendships, mourning her dead mother, and solving the mystery of her friend Mrs. Ramsay’s sudden death. Talland House is both a story for our present time, exploring the tensions women experience between their public careers and private loves, and a story of a specific moment in our past―a time when women first began to be truly independent.

I’ve never read To the Lighthouse, but I did enjoy this book. However, it’s very slow-paced, almost dreamy—which seems sort of appropriate for Lily and her artistic mindset. I feel like she was a bit obsessive over everything in her life—Louis, Mrs. Ramsay, painting, nursing—and a bit clueless, too. However, this was an enjoyable read, even if the answer to the mystery was anti-climatic and downplayed quite a bit.

(Galley courtesy of She Writes Press in exchange for an honest review.)

I really enjoy historical novels and this was an excellent read. We follow the lead character, Lily Briscoe, as she deals with love, loss and a free thinking lifestyle in search of fulfillment and meaning at a time that most women we're not encouraged to do so. I enjoy books that are written in the early 1900s, and felt that the author did a good job with setting up the tone and mood of the book. It has a well-defined storyline with interesting characters. I read it in one sitting because I didn't want to put the book down. The author did a great job and I will definitely be on the lookout for more books by her.

I would like to thank Maggie Humm, She Writes Press and Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Took awhile to get into reading this story, found it enjoyable although not my type of story. I confes didn't finish not because it wasn't written well, just not my thing. Found it interesting how the male characters dominated the females. Good luck with the book loved the cover

For fans of historical fiction and romance a well written novel that I enjoyed,A nurse suffragette a man Louis a story that kept me turning the pages.#netgalley#shewritespress

As a 20 something year old who has become more and more addicted to any form of historical fiction within the last few years, this book was an insta-request based on the time period alone.

We got off the train in 'Bonus town USA' when the storyline for Talland House sounded just as great!

But I hit a speed bump shortly after starting this book. I guess I'm not the 'proper' kinda girl because I felt like I was reading a dictionary and/or Wikipedia more than the actual book. I was definitely getting into the characters but I wasn't able to keep a good reading flow when I had no idea what I was reading until I looked it up.

Maybe one day I'll pick it up at the library and try to finish it, but for now I'm regretfully going to have to DNF it.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the generous opportunity to read and early copy of this book.

My thanks to Maggie Humm, She Writes Press, and NetGalley for the ARC of TALLAND HOUSE.
Talland House is set in the years before the First World War and during 1914 -1918, and documents the life of a young woman, Lily, who has had a sheltered upbringing, but wants to be an artist. She is clearly aware that to be so she must broaden her horizons, so goes to Paris for tuition, and then St. Ives in Cornwall where she meets Louis, a tutor, a fellow artist, and a man she comes to love. He occupies her thoughts at every turn of her life. She wonders why, when he had the opportunity to kiss her he doesn't as his interest appears to match hers.
During her stay in St. Ives, she meets Mrs. Ramsey who reminds Lily of her mother, deceased, the death of whom haunts her. She becomes very close to Mrs. Ramsey and her family and is often invited to Talland House, where she paints and meets other artists. Mrs Ramsey's husband appears to be a bad-tempered, explosive man with little control, and Lily and her friends are concerned at his treatment of his wife. Fast forward twenty years and Lily is exhibiting at The Academy, a painting of the dahlias in Mrs. Ramsey's garden. She is surprised to see Louis at the exhibition, and it is on this occasion he delivers some devastating news.
A beautifully written novel, with language that sweeps the reader to the harbour of St. Ives and the garden at Tallon House. There was some repetition, the similarity between Lily's mother and Mrs. Ramsey was pressed, but a minor thing. Recommended

This story had a good premise...but I could not get into the story. The main character was not relatable and I kept wanting the story to keep going. I found myself skimming a lot. The cover was so nice and I was prepared for more.

Lily Briscoe is a woman caught in the time period when all that was considered correct for a female was to be married and look after her family, however, she was a spinster, a woman who loved with her whole heart, but perhaps it could be said that she loved the wrong people who were never available to her. She was a woman who lived to a certain extent what was expected of her by looking after her elderly father, but she was brave enough to find meaning in her life through her art as she grew into adulthood and the new independence women enjoyed after the Victorian period.

This novel has been written to explain the possible reasons for the death of Mrs Ramsay, a much-loved character in Virginia Woolf’s book To the Lighthouse, it follows the life of Lily Briscoe as a youthful student of art to grown woman ranging in the time frame of 1900 to 1919. We follow Lily’s journey from a young impressionable art student at St Ives in Cornwall, where she meets both the Ramsay family with the gentle Mrs Ramsay who she begins to see as a substitute mother and woman to emulate and the ever-volatile Mr Ramsay alongside Louis Grier, the effervescent art teacher who she develops a lasting crush on. During the intervening years, Lily becomes both a suffragette and works as a nurse in London during World War One with all its brutality and sometimes beauty. Through it all, Talland House, the summer house of the Ramsay’s is the touchstone to Lily and her hopes for the future. After the war Lily, now a grown woman with a certain level of success as an artist unexpectedly discovers that Mrs Ramsay has died in an apparently questionable manner, with all suspicion falling on her husband. Lily is determined to find the truth to the passing of her beloved mother figure, but nothing is as she held to be true in her heart over the course of so many years, and answers lead to further, perhaps deeper understandings of her own life and its meaning.

This novel is not a ‘piece of fluff’ to be read easily whilst enjoying a summer day by the beach but rather it requires concentration from the reader, but the payoff for this level of concentration is well worth the commitment as the story unravels as an “I wonder what” is answered. It has beautiful prose, such as “Lily wanted the minutes ahead to stretch out before her like of roll of velvet.”, which is rich in visual imagery to powerful imaginings of domestic violence and its effects on the victims such as

“Why on earth did he throw the plate?”

“Probably an overcooked egg,” Eliza said. “Poor soul. She carries the weight of Mr Ramsay’s explosions. It’s draining her. You must have seen how drawn and pallid her face has become since we first arrived at Talland House. Sometimes her head resembles a skull, her eyes as so deep-set.”

Nothing is as it seems, and Lily is to a large extent, quite the innocent babe in the world, shocked at the behaviour of men in many different situations and the relationships people forge that deviate from the societal expectations that she herself carries around. It is a thoughtful piece on the growth of a woman emotionally and developmentally. It is a study of a woman coming into her own in a time when women were just starting to experience independence in any true manner and it reveals that there are issues that are truly as old as the hills.

Charming.

I wanted to like this novel as the author has worked so hard and it is an interesting book. set in a fascinating period and I rather liked the characters. The problem is it is too long and becomes at points really repetitive, which makes it slow. The denouments took forever to reach. I think it could be much better, probably 4 stars if it was cut by 20 % which would increase the pace. Sorry.

I wont be posting to Goodreads etc as I don't like giving poor ratings

If you like historical books romance this is definetely for you. Love how she was nurse suffraget and then her love of Louis