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I received this book in a subscription box in June 2016. It was one of the better boxes for me because it was “Roaring 20's Mystery” theme. I ended up canceling this subscription because the extra goodies weren’t making up the value for me and many of the books were remainders. This book is also a remainder, but the author was new to me and the setting was Australia. My mind went to Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, which is coming out with a movie as an aside. I love Miss Fisher's.  Title: Evergreen Falls Author: Kimberley Freeman Page Number: 392, paperback (407 including Discussion Group Guide, etc.) Genre: fiction, mystery, historical fiction, romance Publisher: Touchstone, an imprint of Simon and Schuster, Inc. Year: 2014 1926: Violet Armstrong is one of the few remaining members of staff working at the grand Evergreen Spa Hotel as it closes down over winter. Only a handful of guests are left, including the heir to a rich grazing family, his sister and her suave suitor. When a snowstorm moves in, the hotel is cut off and they are all trapped. No one could have predicted what would unfold. When the storm clears they must all keep the devastating secrets hidden. 2014: After years of putting her sick brother's needs before her own, Lauren Beck leaves her home and takes a job at a Blue Mountains cafe, the first stage of the Evergreen Spa Hotel's renovations. There she meets Tomas, the Danish architect who is overseeing the project, and an attraction begins to grow. In a wing of the old hotel, Lauren finds a series of passionate love letters dated back to 1926, alluding to an affair - and a shocking secret. If she can unravel this long-ago mystery, will it make Lauren brave enough to take a risk and change everything in her own life? This book is a dual-time story line. One story is set in the 1920's Australia, at a resort called Evergreen Falls. The second story is set in the same town in the modern day. Evergreen Falls Resort is set in the Blue Mountains, New South Wales, Australia. The two main characters are Violet Armstrong, a poor maid at the hotel, and Sam, an opioid-addicted son of wealth. Sam’s sister and her fiancé are also guests at the hotel over the winter season. A snowstorm hits, stranding the guests and the skeleton crew at the hotel. The story line follows the romance between Sam and Violet, the spiraling of Sam’s addiction, and the eventual death of one of the people at the hotel. The contemporary story deals with Lauren Beck, a thirty-year-old repressed waitress working in the same town. She has issues with a controlling mother, issues with her brother’s life and death, and issues with taking control over her own life. She meets Tomas, a Danish architect, at the café. Tomas is working on the dilapidated Evergreen Falls resort and he leaves a key to the hotel on accident. Lauren ends up exploring the hotel (and this continues in the novel with Tomas’ permission) and finding love letters between Violet and Sam. Her goal in exploring the hotel is to find out what happened to the two lovers. I think my issue with parallel story lines in books is that it’s hard to pace the stories so that each story line feels complete and full. Sometimes with this book I felt that both story lines were not rounded because they were rushed. I did notice, while checking reviews, that other people either really liked or really hated this story format. I like a detailed story that explores all the reasons why and how but that doesn’t make light reading easy. For instance, Tomas wants Lauren to move to Denmark with him when he leaves, and I just kept thinking that it wasn’t even probable that she could get a visa. Denmark isn’t going to let her in because she snogged an architect for a few weeks. While I wanted a more expatiated novel (with all the detailed settings available) I want to note that this was a fast read for me. The prose was uncomplicated, and the mystery was well-paced. I’m not sure that either romance was believable…but that could be because of the class structure/duration. I gave it three stars because I wanted it to be longer, but I did enjoy it.
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