Among the more laudatory reviews, Nolan Miller and Gerda Oldham wrote in The Antioch Review, "[a]lthough Souhami writes with no personal knowledge of the protagonists, she has managed to compose (from letters, memoirs, and the published works of both) an intimate portrait of two forceful and distinctive women who met in Paris in 1907 and lived together until Gertrude Stein died in 1946....

[17] An unsigned review in The Woman's Art Journal was similarly positive: "Diana Souhami has mined both archival and published material on the relationship between Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas.... Souhami writes entertainingly about their patronage of young, avant-garde artists, the development of their art collection, and their legendary salons, which were central to Paris's cultural life for almost 40 years.

Linda Wagner-Martin in American Literature complained that "[o]ne of the problems with the book is that her focus on the two makes them exactly that—college-educated, upper-class Jewish women, products of turn-of-the-century social and moral patterns.

When Souhami, herself a British novelist, announces in her preface that she is not concerned with Stein's writing, the reader is forced to wonder why the book was written.

In addition, Souhami's sometimes infelicitous descriptive displays are illustrated early as she encapsulates Stein and Toklas, in part, as 'two odd-looking ...