Peggy by Rebecca Godfrey & Leslie Jamison was Peggy Guggenheim is sitting on her marble palazzo on the Grand Canal, contemplating her life. Peggy is the heiress to the Guggenheim fortune, she had lived a charmed life, until her father died. He died when Peggy was 14, he was in the ill-fated Titanic & Peggy is never the same. Peggy spends the rest of her life trying to outlive her family name and the ghosts it came with. She throws herself into the art world, follows her passions and personal freedom. Peggy is smart and often underestimated. She tries to stay loyal to her Jewish heritage & the anti semites that follow her around the world. The men love her and her money and she loves the powers he has over them. This was a fiction story based on a famous woman. This was a good story, Peggy is a fascinating person. Overall this was a 3 star read for me. At times the writing was slow and it was a bit long. I want to thank Netgalley, the authors & Random House Publishing Group for my copy for an honest review. I always enjoy reading about historical figures and was glad I got the opportunity to read this book.

As a former New York - how embarrassed am I to learn the art lover Peggy Guggenheim is the niece of the museum founders and not directly involved. Her place is in Venice. I appreciated this book from the beginning to the end. Raised through tragedy but headstrong enough to be a decision maker in her own life; Peggy was truly a woman following her own voice. Thank you to NetGalley for a terrific read!

I found the writing to be rather uncomfortable for me. I also felt that the book left too much unsaid about Peggy's life. In general, I was not pleased with this book.

I picked this book up because I knew only vague bits about Peggy Guggenheim's life, and regretted that on my trips to Venice I have never yet made it to her palazzo, which is one of the finest museums of modern art in the world. Her story is as fascinating as I hoped, and captures Guggenheim's fierce independence, stunning genius and lifelong passion for the arts. Though she was lucky enough to have tremendous family wealth, this was not always easy to navigate as a woman in the arts. Godfrey, (and later Jamison, who took over the novel after the author's death) brings Guggenheim's story to life—from a sheltered young woman to an unlikely champion of the arts—defying anti-semitism and sexism in pursuit of her dreams. A must read for fans of historical fiction and stories of empowered women (isn't that everyone?).

DNF- When I first saw this book I grabbed it without reading the synopsis which is a really bad habit of mine. After I read the synopsis I was torn since while I love fiction and I love biographies, I don’t like fictional biographies. I kept putting it off until I found myself with nothing else to read and I started.
While I’m sure Peggy Guggenheim was a fascinating person, I had a really hard time with this book. It’s written as though it’s Peggy’s thoughts, complete with chunks of dialogue with no punctuation to signify the dialogue, except for a small part here or there. Because it’s classified as a novel I kept Googling to confirm the parts of her life I read about and found very little confirmation. After I was about 30% in and bored out of my mind I decided this just wasn’t the book for me.
If you enjoy fictionalized biographies or if you are fascinated by the Guggenheims and Peggy in particular, you’ll likely really enjoy this. Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for an advanced copy of this. Peggy hit the shelves on August 13th.

Such a great read! I did not know anything about Margueritte "Peggy" Guggenheim, though I knew of the Guggenheim museum. What a fascinating look at her life. Rebecca Godfrey captures her essence in the smallest of details, truly bringing us inside Peggy's thoughts and feelings. Godfrey passed away before the book could be published which is heart-breaking, but what a wonderful gift to leave behind. Don't miss this one!

I am ambivalent about this portrayal of Peggy Guggenheim. The fictionalized biography angle is frustrating because the reader is unaware of which aspects of her life are actually true.

Peggy Guggenheim is a legend in the art world but is often misunderstood. This book takes you through her early days with great interiority. You get a true sense of the woman beyond just her wealth and privilege. The first person narrative makes you feel very close to the main character and part of the pleasure of that is the legends that her life intersects with. A fantastic book for lovers of art history and art curation.

I love historical fiction, and when it involves a character I’m interested in and actually want to learn about, it’s a bonus. I enjoyed aspects of this book, but it was a bit inconsistent. Perhaps this is due to the change in author, perhaps not, but partway through the novel I just became uninterested in what was happening. It was a bit too scattered to keep my attention and although I am intrigued by the woman Peggy Guggenheim, some of the minutia of her life was distracting.
Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for the ALC in exchange for my honest opinions.

This fictionalized biography of Peggy Guggenheim reveals her vulnerabilities--loss of her father, insecurity about her looks, loss of sisters, etc. She emerges as a poor little rich girl who finds herself through the appreciation of art, but even there she is criticized for her tastes. Begun by Rebecca Godfrey, the novel was completed after her death. While the writing is seamless, there is a greater focus on her early life with her extraordinary later achievements given comparative short shrift. This fascinating glimpse into certain aspects of Peggy Guggenheim's life will whet the reader's appetite for more. And, as is often the case for me when reading historical fiction, I had to take frequent breaks to research minor real-life characters. #Peggy #NetGalley

Thank you net galley for the advance reader copy of this novel. I enjoyed this novel about the art and Guggenheim museum. An overall good read.

I loved reading and learning of the life of Peggy Guggenheim in this wonderful historical fiction novel "Peggy" by Rebecca Godfrey. A fascinating life, bohemian yet in the upper crust of wealth, with much passion for the arts and the people and places that had strong pull on her, some lovely and some dysfunctional. Seems well researched and an enjoyable read. Thank you NetGalley, the author and publisher for the review copy. All opinions are my own.

This was really disjointed due to the change in authors. While I find Peggy and her story interesting, I couldn’t enjoy the rest of the bio due to the change in authors.

Quick witted and insightful. I liked this book, Not loved but I don’t think I was the target audience (I love fantasy and political intrigue). However I deeply appreciate the writing and will definitely revisit when I am more in the mood. Don’t take my opinion too seriously, it was good just not for me.

I so wanted to like this one. During a visit to Venice in college, I fell in love the with the Peggy Guggenheim museum while there. And so while I knew very little about her, I was automatically interested in this fictional telling. However, about 40% in I just didn't care anymore. I found myself not wanting to pick it up -- always a sign that it's time for me to move on. Now, I'm not convinced I'll never finish it, but it definitely wasn't the right time and I knew if I forced myself to finish I'd wind up hating it. Fingers crossed it comes back to me when I'm finally ready for it.

I fell in love with Peggy Guggenheim in Venice. I really didn't know very much about her, but I was traveling with my friend who wanted to see Peggy Guggenheim's private collection of surrealist art. The works are open to the public at her former venetian home, which is perched right alongside the water of the city's famous canals.

I walked away from the space feeling inspired by this iconic woman who delighted in absurdity. I bought her autobiography, Out of This Century: Confessions of an Art Addict, and loved it so much that I didn't want to finish it. It's the kind of book I always want to be in the middle of reading.

I was curious to see how this novel would spin up a different kind of biography about this heiress since there's only so much an autobiography, or a person, will tell you. While reading Peggy, I learned a lot of interesting and sad details that I didn't already know. The book is clearly well researched.

Overall, I didn't like the first person narrative. While it gives the reader a sense of Peggy's voice, it ended up feeling more like a series of diary entries, rather than a fully developed novel. There's also a running theme of Peggy having premonitions about the future, and while this may be accurate to her character in life, in the novel it felt a bit like a cheap trick, a wink at people who know what's coming next. I would have preferred an omniscient narrator and descriptive details about the settings, to ground this heiress's high flying life.

I received a digital advance reader copy from NetGalley and Random House in exchange for an honest review.

Unfortunately, this one ended up being a DNF. It was interesting because I did feel like I wanted to know how the story was going to unfold and was starting to feel connected to the characters, but I think for me, it was taking so long to get going that I just moved on to other reads. I may come back to it one day, but Peggy fell a little flat for me.

Peggy had so much money, but money can’t buy happiness. Peggy had many lovers, a couple of husbands and loads of cash. Peggy became a champion of the arts and that alone makes her a hero to me. Reading the text, I felt so bad for her. Beatings she took, deaths of her loved ones and all her set backs might discourage some, Peggy seemed to get stronger.

The author passed away during the writing and a colleague finished it for her, but the story was seamless.

Going into this book, I knew I might not be the right audience for it. But I was also pulled in by knowing that the author passed before finishing it. I think the biggest weakness in this book is the main character not being likable. I didn’t feel a connection to any character and picking up this book was difficult every time I came back to it because it felt like everything was depressing and going wrong for Peggy. Another pet peeve of mine is not quoting people in books because it is difficult to keep up with who is speaking at times. I do think that you learn a lot about who Peggy and this family was and a bit more about this moment in history. It’s a well written book and I think if you like historical fiction, you’ll enjoy this.

I expected more from this novel of Peggy Guggenheim but perhaps biography or autobiography would better meet my reading needs. Tis wss at times colorful and at other times morose, much luke Guggenheim's life. It She experienced a lot of loss starting with the early loss of her father on the Titanic. A stream of failed affairs throughout her adulthood contributes to the depiction of loss. A story that may have also had a disconnect due to the dual authors as the stream of loss continues through the death by cancer of Godfrey.Overall a story that lagged in places but left me wanting to know more on the subject.

Copy provided by the publisher and Netgalley