The Woman Before Wallis

 In The Woman Before Wallis , the whole book was a gossipy pageturner, even if I ultimately felt like the book skimped on important information and dramatic highlights.

I love the drama of this time, and I love the American heiresses marrying impoverished British titles. Thelma, though, isn’t quite as loaded as the dollar princesses in stories like in That Churchill Woman and American Duchess. Although her twin sister has married a Vanderbilt, Thelma’s not particularly well-off, but her looks and charm attract the attention of Lord Furness. I knew, of course, that her marriage to Lord Furness was just a brief stop on her path, but I still wanted to know a bit more about this time. I wasn’t totally sold on the breakdown of the Furness’ marriage, but I rolled with it because obviously that was necessary to start Thelma’s romance with David, the heir to the British throne.

This romance is broken up by a second storyline, a few years in the future, when Thelma returns to New York as a character witness and emotional support in her twin sister’s custody trial. (This storyline, about a mother with a millionaire heiress baby, trying to get permission to choose her child’s school or fire her nanny, or eventually, even visit her child, seems outlandish, but it actually happened.) In New York, Thelma is reconnecting with her sister, and slowly realizing that David isn’t going to join her or defend her family from scandal.

There is one heavy moment when Thelma asks her friend Wallis Simpson to look after David in her absence.  The Wallis we meet in this novel seems like the same Wallis living in the Bahamas in Beatriz William’s The Golden Hour. Self-absorbed, manipulative, but also always throwing a party and bringing a good time. Readers are left wondering if she saw the opportunity, and swooped in to seduce the easily-swayed David.

The problem is that the story never quite resolves. Of course, readers know going in that David is going to leave Thelma and take up with Wallis, and by the end, it’s clear that David isn’t going to end the affair with a dramatic scene or teary breakup. But all the of famous drama is skipped for an unsatisfying flash-forward finish.  Thelma asks her good friend Wallis Simpson to look after David, and we all know what’s about to happen, but the narrative skips from this to Thelma seeing Bertie on the throne, as George VI, after the famous abdication of King Edward VIII.