This book was entertaining and an easy read. I found it wrapped up a little too neatly for my taste, but I was always invested enough in the plot to continue.

3.5⭐️ rounded up

I love these two authors separately- I love the idea of them using their talents together! I felt slightly disconnected from the characters and had a hard time getting into the story. The rich details slowly drew me in.

This book had a bit of a slow start for me. It felt like it took until about halfway through the book to really get to the good story and then it was a quick read.

I liked the characters and how the pace of the book picked up once the earthquake happened. Overall, it was an interesting historical fiction read based in California during the great earthquake.

THE PHOENIX CROWN is set during the 1906 San Francisco earth quake. The story follows the lives of three women. Gemma Garland is an opera singer who is to sing in the chorus of a new production. Gemma was to meet her best friend Nellie an artist. To Gemma”s dismay Nellie isn’t at the boardinghouse she was living in. Seuling is a young Asian woman and talented seamstress working for her uncle in his laundry business.
How the lives of these women’s connections is revealed as the story unfolds.
I thoroughly enjoyed THE PHOENIX CROWN. It was refreshing to read a historical fiction novel that wasn’t set during WWll. I would recommend THE PHOENIX CROWN to fans of historical fiction.
Thank you to William Morrow and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an advanced digital edition of THE PHOENIX CROWN by Kate Quinn & Janie Chang.

The Phoenix Crown by Kate Quinn and Janie Chang is a novel that left me underwhelmed. With a hundred pages in, I found myself questioning whether I should continue or walk away. The appeal of Quinn’s previous works nudged me forward in the hope it would get better. Unfortunately, it did not.

The narrative introduces two women: Gemma, a soprano seeking the next step in her career, and Suling, a Chinatown embroideress desperate to escape an arranged marriage. Their paths intersect by chance and their story, involving friends, family, and foes, is the basis of the book.

It wasn’t until the last third of the book, when the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 took place, that this book took off.

I commend the research the authors put into this book, but the characters failed to grab my attention. Gemma’s voice fell flat, and Suling’s determination was lost. Their shared backstory—losing parents and being orphaned—seemed to have been a ‘heard that before’ trope. Perhaps their pasts weighed them down, but I was searching for more. The book felt like it went on for far too long. The promise of intrigue—Thornton’s disappearance, the missing Phoenix Crown—fizzled. I found the surrounding characters far more interesting than Gemma and Suling.

As a warning, Quinn and Chang stir up the era, but some terms make the reader shudder and constantly need to remind themselves of the times this book took place.

An unlikely quartet of women who unite under disastrous circumstances. Did I stay up all night finishing this book? Yes. Am I typing this and working with a quarter of brain cells from being sleep deprived? Also yes.
I loved this book, it paints the realistic picture of survival. A story of women who have been stolen from, abused, neglected and kicked at their lowest....with the power to keep standing up and fighting. Kate Quinn will always be on my auto-buy and I will be diving into more Janie Chang novels.
I want to give you an eloquent and beautifully written review, but again, no sleep.
I will say, I would want to be friends with every single woman in this novel. Sally, Reggie, Alice, Suling, I'm fully convinced with the right backing y'all could have taken over the world!
3.5 stars and thank you to NetGalley & William Morrow for the ARC!

I give this book a 3.75. The story took a while for me to connect with. The characters were going instead of carrying a story. Towards the earthquake happening, the characters gain more agency. San Francisco is a stunning setting and a character. I loved that the story was set in a famous city yet not always portrayed in novels like New York City. The ending is satisfying.

Set in San Francisco, days before the 1906 earthquake Gemma Garland heads to the city to revive her opera career. Gemma has an exceptional voice, but is plagued by migraines that affect her performance. When she meets arts patron Henry Thornton, he promises to help make her a star. Henry is a railroad magnate who is obsessed with Chinese antiques. This also leads him to help Suling Feng, a Chinese embroideress who wants to make enough money to escape an arranged marriage. But Henry’s support may come with strings attached. This historical thriller ups the suspense as it counts down to the earthquake, but something big is uncovered even before the big disaster. I love Kate Quinn and adding a co-author Janie Chang gives the Chinese point of view authenticity. If you love suspense thrillers, but are a little wary of historical fiction, give this book a chance. It embodies the power of women working together across generations and ethnicities.

This was good, but not one that will stick with me forever like Quinn’s other novels. I didn’t think it had the same depth.

Kate Quinn has proven to be one of my favorite authors; her WWII-era works "The Huntress" and "The Diamond Eye" have been two of my favorite reads of the last couple of years, and so when I saw this one was available on NetGalley, I knew I had to request it. Her partnership here with Janie Chang is a seamless read, the perfect intertwining of two authors into one beautifully-rendered and expertly-crafted story. Both protagonists - Gemma, the would-be opera star, and Suling, the Chinese-American seamstress - are compelling leading ladies, and the characters who surround them are just as engaging. The thread of impending doom that weaves through the novel, thanks to the looming of what the reader knows is one of the worst natural disasters ever to hit the United States, and crippled San Francisco, accompanies the unraveling of what both Gemma and Suling have come to believe about some of the people in their lives; there is a sense of destruction coming that never quite lets up, and it provides the impetus to just. keep. reading. Overall, another notch in Quinn's success column, and I'm definitely looking forward to both Quinn's and Chang's next offerings, whether individually or together.

The Phoenix Crown is not my typical fare, and I have never read a book by authors Kate Quinn and Janie Chang, although I have heard wonderful things about Quinn from those who enjoy her style of historical fiction. So why have I picked up this novel that is so out of my usual league? The 52 Book Club chose it for a read-along, and I was excited to explore this novel along with a group.

Unfortunately, it says a lot when I find the Authors’ Note at the end of the book to be more interesting than the novel itself. I learned so much more from those few pages - including that Alice Greenwood was an actual person (would have loved to have known this while I was reading) - than I did from the entirety of The Phoenix Crown. With The Phoenix Crown, I was expecting a historical “National Treasure-esque” novel set against the backdrop of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, but what I actually got was something quite different.

For being a historical fiction novel, this book could practically take place in modern times - the attitudes of the characters and their manner of speaking was not in line with what I would expect from society in the early 1900s, more than 100 years ago. The fact that this novel features a mixed race sapphic relationship that anyone barely blinks an eye at did not feel authentic to me. Furthermore, the novel is powered by the women of the story, who all move freely around the world primarily without the constraints of men. I feel like the diminished, singular role of women in society would have been felt more prominently throughout this book if the airs and attitudes of the time had been more pronounced.

The San Francisco earthquake and the titular phoenix crown itself both play minor roles in this novel, after being touted as major plot points, The book spends much of its pages discussing the careers and relationships of the main characters, without really establishing a meaningful historical setting. Furthermore, I did not care for any of the characters and found them to be wholly uninspired.

Nonetheless, I am giving this book 3 stars because although it was clearly not the book for me and failed to meet what I expected of it, there is a satisfying story here for those who can put aside what they thought this novel would be and accept it for what it is.

In this incredible multi-perspective historical fiction novel, Kate Quinn and Janie Chang bring readers to San Francisco in the weeks before the great earthquake of 1906. Following four women, their relationships with each other, and their relationship with a wealthy San Franciscan man. The four protagonists -- opera singer Gemma, seamstress Suling, botanist Alice, and artist Reggie -- are all connected to Henry Thornton, but the earthquake will reveal some dark and uncomfortable secrets for all of them. Readers will journey past the earthquake to see how the women rebuild themselves and protect themselves and others from Thornton in a dramatic tale that takes readers around the world with the four protagonists. Quinn and Chang have brought San Francisco’s business and diversity to life, including the anti-Chinese racism of the period, and their characters interact with this reality in genuine, realistic ways. They balance the different characters and alternating perspectives of Gemma and Suling very well, and their world-building and interest in historical detail is fascinating. The combination of Quinn and Chang’s prose, attention to detail and character development, and the strength of the narrative itself make this an incredible, immersive, and fascinating read for fans of both authors and the historical fiction genre.

Sadly, this was a DNF for me at 24% because I was just plain bored. Also, I recently read Janie Chang's The Porcelain Moon and I felt some similarities to parts of this story and added to my lack of investment in the story.

The Phoenix Crown, a valuable headdress worn by Chinese royalty, is locked up by wealthy and influential businessman Henry Thornton. He owns many Chinese artifacts and is a ruthless collector of many things.
This book centers around four main characters: Gemma a singer looking for her big break, her old friend from NY, Reggie, a fearless and talented painter, Alice, a knowledgeable and well known San Francisco botanist and Suling, a brave, Chinese American seamstress searching for her love.
These four lives are connected by the phoenix crown. Each character realizes how they have been manipulated by Thornton, and the action climaxes during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
After surviving this devastating earthquake, these women are able to create new lives for themselves, thinking that Thornton died in the disaster. Until the Phoenix Crown resurfaces and the search for its owner begins.
#netgalley

I love this historical fiction novel set in San Francisco around the earthquake of 1906. This duo writing team did a great job of bringing two different perspectives during this time.

I LOVED LOVED LOVED this novel! It was so unique and written very well. I loved the dual perspective, the settings, and the character development. There were so many things happening, but loved that they all came together at the end.

We had book club last night where we had a great discussion about this book. My book club tends to prefer historical fiction so I thought this would be a perfect pick. We loved the developing, individual stories of the women in this book. There was a little something for everyone: murder, mystery, romance, the arts and of course the great city of San Francisco. This book provides so much to discuss - issues of race, class, gender and more can be explored and debated. I'm a huge fan of Kate Quinn and look forward to discovering more from Janie Chang.

I was really excited to read The Phoenix Crown and am so glad I finally got the chance to do so. It was really good throughout and I loved both Gemma and Suling. Having both their narratives moved the story along nicely.

The authors captured the horror of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake really well. I also liked the plot of this novel and how it all connected with the disaster that destroyed a city. There were things I didn't expect, which made for some interesting surprises. There was even an element of mystery and suspense which had the characters racing with the clock while the city was in turmoil.

I didn't know much about the racism toward the Asian community during that time period. It definitely felt relatable to present times, even with being of a different race and nationality.

I definitely recommend this novel (and have been doing so a lot lately) and I hope this writing duo will pair up again! I'm excited to attend an online discussion with them next week. Speaking of pairs, this story goes along well with The Nature of Fragile Things by Susan Meissner.

Movie casting suggestions:
Gemma: Lily James
Suling: Tiffany Espensen
Nellie: Jessica De Gouw
Alice: Radha Mitchell
Thornton: Finn Wittrock
George: Diego Boneta

This one started off a bit slow for me, but switching to audio really helped. Once I got into a groove with it, I felt like the story picked up and held my interest, as there were a few exciting and intense moments that had me on the edge of my seat. The part I enjoyed the most about the book were the female friendships, as this was a prevalent theme throughout the book. The authors did a great job of bringing together four very different women through an interesting plot.

Pick this one up if you enjoy:
-historical fiction
-San Francisco in the early 1900s
-female friendships
-music, art, and fashion
-botany

Synopsis: San Francisco, 1906. In a city bustling with newly minted millionaires and scheming upstarts, two very different women hope to change their fortunes: Gemma, a golden-haired, silver-voiced soprano whose career desperately needs rekindling, and Suling, a petite and resolute Chinatown embroideress who is determined to escape an arranged marriage. Their paths cross when they are drawn into the orbit of Henry Thornton, a charming railroad magnate whose extraordinary collection of Chinese antiques includes the fabled Phoenix Crown, a legendary relic of Beijing’s fallen Summer Palace.

My thoughts: The Phoenix Crown is set in 1906 San Fransico. It starts with the days leading up to the earthquake of 1906 and then follows four women through the events before, during, and after the quake. I enjoyed that this book included the history of San Francisco and the Chinese during that time period.

One of the many things that make this story so appealing is that Quinn's women come from all walks of life but have one experience in common. Life has taught them that to have any chance of living their best life, they must take matters into their own hands and fight for it.

Many thanks to NetGalley and William Morrow for sharing this must–read for historical fiction lovers and, really, just about anyone who loves reading strong female characters.