Another great book from Kate Quinn. I love that she gives us author notes at the end of each of her books with more information about events that take place during her stories, and this one was no exception.

It was such fun getting to know the members of The Briar Club. I loved their Thursday get-togethers and how they became family even though they all were from such different backgrounds. I also enjoyed the chapters from the houses' point of view. How to fun to even work in the Pillsbury bake-off competition!

This one is a definite must read for historical fiction lovers, Kate Quinn fans and all the readers out there!

It's the 1950's and the Briarwood House of Washington DC has seen better days. The all-female boarding house is run by a curmudgeonly mother of two who rents out rooms and closely monitors the boarders- sometimes by pawing through their belongings. When Grace March moves into the tiny attic room she begins to draw the boarders together, and an unlikely family drawing together.

Set against the backdrop of McCarthy's Red Scare, author Kate Quinn weaves together the story of women whose lives will be forever intertwined. Leading toward a brutal murder, the story unfolds, drawing the reader in and the characters together. Beautifully told, this is a historical mystery readers won't be able to put down.

Kate Quinn has never disappointed me - and The Briar Club might be my favorite of her novels thus far. It’s possible I say something like that after each of her new novels. Set in a boarding house (maybe I’ll become fascinated by these like I was with boarding schools and am with fancy resorts (oh, but I’m reading a book about to change that!), The Briar Club focuses on the very, very different women and children who live there. Grace, a new and rather mysterious resident, brings them all together for a meal each Thursday evening in her tiny attic room furnished with just a tiny fridge and hot plate. These disparate folks form a family of sorts. Each chapter of the book focuses on one of the house’s residents. Their individual stories come to a crescendo in a complex way illustrating the power of strong relationships even to overcome the darkest secrets.

Even though it starts with a murder - a ghastly one, I’ll admit, at first I was a bit baffled at this novel. I had come to expect certain things from Kate Quinn, in terms of history and suspense. And though surprised a bit, I loved the structure immediately. I have been recently fascinated by the short story form (thanks Sidle Creek!), so I love how Quinn creates chapters that focus on a member of the Briar club and reads much like a short story. We get to know Pete a young boy living in the house owned and operated by his single mother; Nora who loves her job in the National Archives (and maybe a gangster too), Reka an immigrant artist who is furious at what has been taken from her; Fliss who lives with her daughter there while her husband serves as a doctor in Korea, Bea who is missing her career as a professional baseball player; Claire who is working multiple jobs to earn the money for a home of her own; Arlene who works for HUAC and has been left embittered by an affair from her youth; Grace who seems maybe the most mysterious but is also the glue that holds this group together with her Thursday night gatherings, until she needs them in a big way. We meet many of their “people” along the way, learning a great deal about life just after WWII in our world. The subtlety with which Quinn builds her overarching story within these stories is creatively amazing and reflective of her extreme writing talent. I am so glad she used this format to create such an unexpected work. She concludes each chapter with a recipe based on the featured character. Quinn also used the boarding house as a character - between each chapter was a brief interlude where the house would update the reader on the murder. So many elements working so well together.

As with my recent read of Maggie Smith’s You Could Make This Place Beautiful and Jolene McIlwain’s Sidle Creek, I am struck very much by the form and its function in this work. If I were still teaching English - I’ve said that a time or two of late - I would have so much material here. I also love the illustration here of the power of friendship. In this novel, friendship alleviates loneliness, enables and supports strength and courage, quite literally saves lives, supports change. Quinn tackles mob mentality, gender equality, corruption, domestic abuse, child neglect, crime, and more. She teaches history, creating the spirit of Washington DC in the 50s - we see politics, recipes, a national baking contest. How I admire Quinn’s ability to do all of this in such an inviting, suspenseful, and entertaining way. Kate Quinn’s The Briar Club publishing on July 9 is a must read.

This locked-door mystery set in Washington, D.C. during the McCarthy era not only teases whodunit, but also, who is/are the victims. The setting is a sentient boardinghouse for women on Thanksgiving of 1954 and the story weaves together the time of the murder with the various characters and each of their back stories. Every one of the women has a reason to murder someone, but who actually does it and why is absolutely not what the reader would suspect. That's what makes this story so far above the ordinary. The key person is Grace March when she moves into the Briarwood boarding house. Her interactions with the other characters are what tie the story together, and does a wonderful job of it. Nobody is what they seem to be on first impression, and how all the characters develop throughout the story makes for compelling reading. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and highly recommend it.

I am a long-time fan of Kate Quinn and will devour anything she writes. This book was so beautiful and was very character driven, which is my favorite kind of book. This is the first book in awhile that Kate has written that is NOT set during WWII or is WWII adjacent. I loved the departure. Another thing I love is that the book is set in a boardinghouse in DC and there are only eight chapters. You get to know each of the boarders in each chapter and then their histories and experiences all come together and intersect at the end and it was so satisfying. It reminded me of a Maeve Binchy book or the Olive Kitteridge books by Elizabeth Strout.

The Briar Club by Kate Quinn ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ This one I’m struggling to rate! Kate is one of my favorite authors! Rose Code, The Huntress, Alice Network, and Diamond Eye are all books I DEVOURED. This book is different than her usual style and I can’t say I was obsessed. It is very character driven and a little bit slower moving, but does get better at the end when all of the pieces connect. It follows 8 different women, and some storylines are more interesting than others, so hang on because the end gets good!

This book starts with 2 dead bodies at a boarding house and police at the scene. It jumps back and follows the story of 8 different women living in the house, and by the end you find out how it all connects.

Pub. Date: July 9, 2024.

Perfect if you like:
•Character driven story.
•Found family.
•Strong female characters.
•Washington D.C. in the 1950’s.

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Spice: 🌶️
Mood: 🍿🍷

🚪: implied intimacy.
⚠️: explicit language.

I've been on a contemporary romance kick and wasn't completely sure if I wanted to dig into something historical that also was likely to be a bit heavier (based on my prior experience with the author). I thought I'd give it a try and see if I was in the mood for it or not, and of course Kate Quinn sucked me right in. The Briar Club tells the story of the residents of a women-only boardinghouse in Washington DC in the 1950s, right after a mysterious new boarder joins the house and begins to slowly draw the other residents together. We know from the first page that this is going to end up with a body count (again, this is pretty standard for Kate Quinn), but we don't know who the bodies are or how exactly we got there. The story alternates between narrators, starting with the young son of the embittered matron of the house and then cycling through other residents, letting us get to know each woman and her secrets as we see how their stories intertwine. The character development was fantastic, and while I get the sense that these women were kind of meant to serve as archetypes for women in early post-war America (the wife of a doctor sent to serve in Korea, an injured female baseball player mourning the end of the all-female league from the war years, a woman working for the House Un-American Activities Committee who has gone all in on the Red Scare), each woman still felt complex and authentic on her own. This was one of those books I stayed up late reading, as the pace just kept picking up as I went along. Content warnings for references to intimate partner violence, references to past abuse, and on-page violence).

Thank you to the publisher William Morrow and Netgalley @netgalley for this e-arc. All thoughts are my own.


Briarwood house is an all women boarding house in the D.C area. Set in 1950, Grace March, a widow, moves into the attic room.

Each week Grace throws a dinner party in her small yet cozy room, so when a shocking act of violence takes place in the house, the women are shocked to their core. Is there an enemy in their midst?

I am finding this review hard to write because I have enjoyed some of the author’s previous works, but this book was a miss for me. The chapters were overly long, and each chapter was told from a different character’s perspective. While this did allow me to get to know each character, it left me wanting more from each of them. I felt that I was reading multiple short stories, rather than one cohesive story. The pacing was also very slow, which is something I dread, especially for historical fiction. I did appreciate the amount of research that must have gone into this book, and that aspect did shine through. While it is historical fiction, it also had undertone of cozy mystery, which makes sense with the slower pacing and subject of murder taking place in the house. I also didn’t appreciate the inclusion of recipes in the book the way others have. I don’t think that the recipes added any value being included within the chapters besides making the chapters even longer. If you’re going to include them, I think they belong in the back of the book.

in 1950 Washington D.C. live an oddball group of women in a boardinghouse. Ranging from an ex-female baseball player, young British mom, gungho McCarthy patriot, older cantankerous artist, young modern woman with a questionable boyfriend and the mysterious newcomer who shakes everything up and forms a weekly supper club called The Briar Club. We open with a mystery and then spend the rest of the book learning about each Briar Club member's past and secrets. It is a tumultuous country that is in flux with post war euphoria fighting with a fear of communism and another war looming as well as changing roles for women. This is a historical mystery filled with remarkable characters infused with a hint of danger, friendship and more than a few laughs in true Kate Quinn fashion. Just like the house itself you want to be a part of this group admiring their spunk, cheering them on and keeping their secrets. One of her very best! My thanks to the publisher for the advance copy.

I thought this was really well written and I look forward to reading more from this author in the future. I think it will find readers at our library, so we will definitely be purchasing for the collection.

“A Haunting and powerful story of female friendships and secrets in a Washington, D.C. boarding house during the McCarthy era.”

The Briar Club has a bit of everything, historical fiction, domestic drama, murder mystery, and friendship and love.

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started, and I will admit that I wasn’t super invested in the first 1/4, but it definitely picked up the pace and hooked me. The characters were powerful and interesting and the dynamic of the Briarwood house was fascinating! I really enjoyed this book and I’m glad I stuck it out through the obscenely long chapters. ( they were broken up a bit with the recipes added in but seeing ‘1 hour and 36 minutes left in chapter’ on my kindle hurt my soul). By the halfway point I couldn’t put it down. This was my first and absolutely not my last Kate Quinn book. A must read for sure. Thank you William Morrow publishing and Netgalley for the ARC!

Clever idea to make the house one of the characters and use a murder as the frame story to MCCarthyism and spies in Washington, DC. This is a more unusual topic for Quinn who is dabbling in a touch of magical realism to make the house a person who narrates one of the chapters. The other women are all boarding at the Briar House when the murder happens. From mobsters, to spies, domestic abuse and lesbians who play baseball, Quinn covers many topics in this novel. I enjoyed the creativity to stitch all the characters and backstories together. However, there seems to be a bit too many people. I liked the spy story and wish that had been more of the book. I do think Quinn has a talent for making history come to life and examining past events and giving the reader a way to reflect on society.

4 stars for Kate Quinn's latest, "The Briar Club", which is set in the early 1950's in a the titular D.C. boarding house as the "Red Scare" takes off & consumes Washington. We follow eight (8) women there and each of them has a rather long chapter to themselves, and it all comes together, of course. This one is a slow burn, very character driven story and very well written with a dash of mystery to boot. I found it well worth the effort & I look forward to whatever Ms. Quinn does next! My thanks to Net Galley & the publisher for the complimentary review copy - my true pleasure to review it!

I absolutely liked this book. It was entertaining and enjoyable. Will this be an addition to my shelf for binge reading and rereading in the future? Possibly.

One of my favorite historical fiction reads of the year! WOW! You can’t help but be drawn into Kate Quinn’s majestic writing and development of characters. This one will have you from the first chapter until the very end. Please preorder this book!!

Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

I loved this book! So interesting and captivating. The story was both historically accurate and fascinating coupled with a mystery that kept you guessing until the very end.

This gripping story from Kate Quinn had me hooked from beginning to end. I highly recommend to historical fiction and suspense lovers!

"The Briar Club" by Kate Quinn transports readers to 1950s Washington, DC, where Briarwood House, a boardinghouse, becomes the backdrop for unlikely friendships among its eclectic residents. When mysterious widow Grace March moves in, she brings together a disparate group including English beauty Fliss, policeman's daughter Nora, frustrated baseball star Beatrice, and fervent McCarthy supporter Arlene. Grace's attic-room dinner parties offer solace, but she harbors a dark secret. As violence rocks the house, the women must confront their fears and loyalties, questioning who among them is the true enemy. Quinn's novel masterfully captures the paranoia of the McCarthy era while exploring the evolving roles of women in postwar America, delivering a gripping tale of secrets and solidarity.

Kate Quinn takes on the post-WWII era! With her usual unforgettable characters and vivid descriptions, Kate Quinn again draws you in only to break your heart, then mend it back together. If I have a quibble with this book, it's only that I didn't realize where it was going in the beginning - but once you get used to the format, it all comes together very nicely. I really enjoyed this one, and I really appreciated that she gave us a historical fiction set in a time period that was NOT WWII. Will be highly recommending this one to all my historical fiction lovers, and even maybe some crossover thriller/suspense readers as well.

Kate Quinn's The Briar Club offers a captivating journey into 1950s Washington D.C., where the residents of Briarwood House, an all-female boardinghouse, navigate a world shrouded in secrets and suspicion during the McCarthy era. Through the perspectives of diverse characters such as Grace March and the boarders of Briarwood House, Quinn expertly explores themes of friendship, loyalty, and the human spirit's resilience in the face of adversity. While the novel's slow-burn narrative and large cast of characters may initially seem daunting, Quinn's meticulous research and skillful storytelling ensure that each character is fully realized and memorable, drawing readers deeper into the intricate web of intrigue and mystery. With its compelling blend of historical drama, suspense, and heartfelt emotion, The Briar Club is a must-read for fans of women's history and captivating storytelling.