I wanted so badly to love this book. I enjoy books set in the 1920s, such as The Great Gatsby, and often gravitate towards well-written historical fiction. However, The Glittering Hour fell short for me.

The opening premise, alternating between two different times a decade apart, was interesting. Selina writes letters to her daughter, Alice, telling her about her life at a certain moment in the 1920s. Through the letters and the longer narrations, we learn about Selina's romance with Lawrence and her romps around London with her friends. There is some intrigue, particularly surrounding Lawrence and Selina's general desire to be free from the constraints of her more conservative family. As the book progresses, you also start to question from where Selina is writing and things begin to not unfold as they seemed they would.

My biggest hang up were the characters themselves. It is difficult for an adult to write a child character, and Grey certainly struggled with Alice. But more broadly, the characters felt flat and one-dimensional. Maybe I have a cold, unfeeling heart, but I didn't really care about Selina and Lawrence's romance and got frustrated by them. The book frequently switches between the two time periods, which was easy to follow, but the narration also flips between characters at seemingly random moments. One particular moment was when all of the sudden we were following Lawrence's roommate, a character that had been mentioned but barely played a role in the book until that point. I wanted more of the side characters––like Flick, Theo, and Edith––who were honestly more interesting than Selina and Alice.

My other complaint was how the book resolves itself. I won't go into too much detail, for fear of spoiling. But, I'll simply say that things wrapped up a little too neatly for a situation that wasn't easy...

2.5 stars rounded up.