Book Review: Tiny Little Thing

Author: Beatriz Williams

Publication Date: June 23, 2015

Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons

In the summer of 1966, Christina Hardcastle—“Tiny” to her illustrious family—stands on the brink of a breathtaking future. Of the three Schuyler sisters, she’s the one raised to marry a man destined for leadership, and with her elegance and impeccable style, she presents a perfect camera-ready image in the dawning age of television politics. Together she and her husband, Frank, make the ultimate power couple: intelligent, rich, and impossibly attractive. It seems nothing can stop Frank from rising to national office, and he’s got his sights set on a senate seat in November.
 
But as the season gets underway at the family estate on Cape Cod, three unwelcome visitors appear in Tiny’s perfect life: her volatile sister Pepper, an envelope containing incriminating photograph, and the intimidating figure of Frank’s cousin Vietnam-war hero Caspian, who knows more about Tiny’s rich inner life than anyone else. As she struggles to maintain the glossy façade on which the Hardcastle family’s ambitions are built, Tiny begins to suspect that Frank is hiding a reckless entanglement of his own…one that may unravel both her own ordered life and her husband’s promising career.

“I do what I’m supposed to do. Girls like me, we wear our pearls and we write our thank-you notes the very next morning, and we fall in love with only the best sort of young man, the kind of man who’s going places and will take us with him. And when he asks us to marry him, we say yes.”

Like most of our caste, Mrs. Hardcastle invests lavishly in certain things, things that matter, things that last – jewelry, shoes, houses, furniture, the education of the next generation of Hardcastles – and not in others.

Me. The Tiny of two years ago, a Tiny who had existed for the briefest of lifetimes: not quite married, slender and cream-skinned, bird-boned and elastic, silhouetted against a dark sofa of which I can still remember every thread. About the make the most disastrous mistake of her life.

I am left speechless after finishing what I consider to be one of the most engrossing novels that I have had the privilege of reading in 2015. The characters and their secrets pulled me into this Kennedy style family and left me feeling so incomplete and lost when the story was done. This book will proudly sit atop my favorite’s shelf and will be read over and over again. The story follows Christina “Tiny” Hardcastle in her life being married to a rising politician and the story is definitely her own for she has secrets of her own and a past that she wishes to forever keep hidden. Beatriz Williams never ceases to impress me with her eloquent dialogue and character descriptions; reading her novels is like stepping into a brand new, adventurous world.

Tiny’s character was one that I easily connected to because of the way she told her story. It was easy to follow her and even easier to become invested in her life and in her tangled web of secrets. You will find yourself rooting for her, especially by the end when you learn what other secrets the Hardcastle family is harboring. Tiny has so much pressure on her shoulders because her husband Frank is running for office, and it is her ultimate duty to keep her deep, dark secrets from coming to light. I was very pleased to also find out that in November of this year, Williams is releasing a novel that follows another of Tiny’s sisters; I am beyond excited and cannot wait!

***A free copy of this book was provided to me by the publishers at G.P. Putnam’s Sons in exchange for my honest review***