Category: Mystery

Fiction, literary fiction, Mystery, romance, thriller

Book Review: All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker

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“When it comes to marriage, love is merely a visitor over a lifetime. Respect and kindness, they are the true foundations.”

It’s 1975 in Monta Clare, a small town in Missouri, and girls are disappearing. When the daughter of a wealthy family is targeted and is saved by a local, partially blind boy – Patch, the lives of everyone associated with him will never be the same. Patch and those who love him, discover that the line between triumph and tragedy has never been finer. Everyone’s search for answers will lead them to years of sadness and unexpected paths.

“At ten years old he realized that people were born whole, and that the bad things peeled layers from the person you once were, thinning compassion and empathy and the ability to construct a future. At thirteen he knew those layers could sometimes be rebuilt when people loved you. When you loved.”

This book was published last year, and the hype was insane. I actually requested this book from my library countless times and just never took the plunge to read it. I kept sending it back and requesting it again and again because there was something about the blurb that told me I would not enjoy it and that thing was absolutely right. This book finally checked out to me while I was away on holiday, and I finally took the plunge. It did not live up to the hype for me at all. All the characters did not feel like real people, they felt like literary characters that can only exist in a book. I don’t expect to relate to characters; I just want the author to convince me that that character exists somewhere on earth and Whitaker failed on that account for me.

“God is a first call and a last resort, from christening to death bed. In between is where faith is tested. The mundanity. Anyone can drop to their knees when they’re facing crisis, but doing it when everything is steady…”

Let me first say that this book is extremely well written. I can quote you a million lines that show you that Chris Whitaker is a damn good writer. I also think you would like this book better if you know what to expect. So, I’m going to tell you what to expect – this book is a sloooooowwwwww character driven drama. Yes, it is a mystery but it’s not a traditional mystery. This is a book about what happens after you’re saved from what could have been a terrible tragedy. Whitaker takes the scenic view to get you to the end. Which would be everything you hoped it would be, except the journey there is so circuitous and meandering that you just want it to end.

“The shrink they make me see, she taps her pencil and frowns at me. And she talks about how we construct our ideals out of our own past mistakes. And I wonder what exactly a mistake is. A thing we should not have done, right? But if learning is built on trial and error there can be no mistakes, only rungs on a ladder to someplace better.”

I never understood Saint’s motivations to do what she did. I think her whole life was dedicated to Patch and I never understood it. It felt like Saint was absolutely in love with Patch while Patch did not feel an inkling of romantic love for her. Every decision Saint took was to the service of Patch and I understand doing that when you’re young and he’s your only friend. But when Patch comes back and Saint remains utterly devoted to him, I just did not understand her motivation. Patch never did a single thing to deserve all that and it’s like the author realizes that at the end and just decides to have Patch make a stupid decision and then claim it was for Saint.

“Saint knew that for some it was written in the stars that no matter how hard they fought their road did not lead somewhere good.”

This book was 597 pages. It did not need to be this long. I gave it 3 stars purely because of the writing and its satisfying ending.

Have you heard of this one? Have you read it? What did you think of it?

Leggy

Fiction, Historical, literary fiction, Mystery

Book Review: The God of the Woods by Liz Moore

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“Rich people, thought Judy—she thought this then, and she thinks it now—generally become most enraged when they sense they’re about to be held accountable for their wrongs.”

It’s early morning, August 1975 and Barbara Van Laar has gone missing. She’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished 14 years ago, never to be found. As a search begins, we find ourselves chasing down the secrets of the Van Laar family, their history, the 14-year-old stone cold case and the blue-collar community working in the shadow of this powerful family.

“It was funny, she thought, how many relationships one could have with the same man, over the course of a lifetime together.”

Liz Moore is the writer of Long Bright River which was a huge hit during the pandemic. I remember being the odd man out on that book because I did not like it and gave it 2 stars. I also realized that I had read her 2016 novel, The Unseen World, which I frankly have no recollection of reading, but Goodreads tells me I gave this book 4 stars. Anyway, I wasn’t going to read this book because it was getting so much hype, and I remembered my experience of her previous book and was going to stay away until I saw her on Obama’s list. I was intrigued that a mystery novel made it on there, so I decided to finally pick it up and was not disappointed.

“This is one of the few sheer pleasures Louise knows in life: the near-otherworldly feeling of touching another human’s body with your own body in a way that, for the first time, transcends mere friendliness. These are the times in her life that Louise has felt most acutely the animal nature of her humanity, and therefore they have been the most comforting. To be a human is complex, and often painful; to be an animal is comfortingly simple and good.”

This book is a master class in well written prose. I thought the descriptions and the turn of phrases were fantastic. This story is told through multiple perspectives taking us on a history journey through the Van Laar family. We get Tracy, a young meek girl who is suffering from her parents’ divorce and is sent to this camp by her father for the summer to avoid actually spending time with her. Alice, mother of the missing Barbara who also lost her son 14 years ago and is addicted to pills having never gotten over the disappearance of her son. Louise, a 26 year old camp counselor who is “engaged” to a boy from a wealthy family and wonders if this will be her ticket out of poverty until she encounters what it’s like to become a scapegoat to a family that finds you expendable and Judy, the first female investigator in the state at 26 who is smart, observant and very good at her job.

“she also believed that part of a mother’s duty was to be her daughter’s first, best critic; to fortify her during her childhood, so that in womanhood she could gracefully withstand any assault or insult launched in her direction. This was the method her own mother had used upon her. She hadn’t liked it at the time, but now she understood it.”

This book was a 5-star read for me till the end when I deducted a star because it was the worst ending. The author takes us through the book and dangles multiple suspects at us only to completely drop all of them for an ending that I found so unrealistic and ridiculous. I can’t believe her editor let her keep that ending. It just did not work for me at all. I gave this book 4 stars because I did not think the ending lived up to the entire work for me, but I still recommend it for the journey.

Have you read this one? Let me know in the comments.

Leggy

Fiction, Mystery, thriller

Book Review: The Housemaid by Freida McFadden

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Millie, a recent parolee, who is homeless and jobless is desperate to find a job to stay within the conditions of her parole. Desperate, she interviews for a maid position at the Winchesters and is shocked when she gets the job. She wonders how her time in prison and why she was in prison didn’t come up when they ran her background check but nevertheless she is so happy to finally have a job and a place to stay. As she becomes enscounsed into the life of the Winchesters especially the wife, Nina, she wonders how such a perfect man ended up with such a crazy wife. As Nina constantly gaslights and scares Millie, she realizes that all might not be as it looks.

I had this book on my to-be-read list for 2 years before I finally read it on a flight to Arizona. I started it at the airport waiting for my flight and finished it as the plane touched down in Phoenix. This was a very compelling book and easy to read. I knew where it was going because certain characters were just too good to be true. But, even though I knew what the author was going to do at the end, it did not reduce my enjoyment of this book. I really enjoyed the interactions between Nina and Millie. I found the PTA portions of the book to be so well written and fascinating. The first 85% of this book were quite intriguing but once you hit the last 30 pages, then you have to utterly suspend all logic and just enjoy ride.

It’s really hard to review a mystery book without giving away the twist but I think you should pick this one up if you’re looking for a book that would definitely hold your interest and that you can read in one sitting. There’s a second book in the series but I’m hesitant about picking it up since I now know the formula and the author continues with the same protagonist, Millie.

I gave this book 3 stars on Goodreads. Let me know if you’ve read this one.

Leggy

Fiction, Mystery, romance, thriller

Book Review: First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston

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“There’s an old saying: The first lie wins. It’s not referring to the little white kind that tumble out with no thought; it refers to the big one. The one that changes the game. The one that is deliberate. The lie that sets the stage for everything that comes after it. And once the lie is told, it’s what most people believe to be true. The first lie has to be the strongest. The most important. The one that has to be told.”

Evie Porter has the perfect life – a fantastic boyfriend, a big house in a charming small town, new work as a gallerist’s assistant but there’s a problem: Evie does not exist. She is a made up, perfectly crafted character given to her by a mysterious voice on the phone. She has no idea who her employer is even though she has worked for him for over 8 years. Before every job, she gets a delivery that contains what her identity, future location and her mark will be.

Evie takes the time every job to research her new character and location, she is great at her job, that’s why she’s paid the big bucks but why is this particular character of Evie so unnerving for her. Evie is falling in love with her mark, Ryan, and doesn’t understand what this current job is about. She’s spent months building this relationship while waiting for instructions that never come until someone with her original identity, one that she has been protecting for years and hoping to get back to, waltzes into town.

This was my January Book of the Month pick. I really wanted to read a thriller and I think this delivered. The main character is not a stereotypically good character but you find yourself rooting for her as she exists in a morally grey area. This book won’t blow your mind but it is a fun, quick read which is what I was looking for. As we delve more into Evie and Ryan’s relationship, we wonder more and more if Ryan is more than a mark, why has she been placed in his life for several months without further instructions? Why is he always in East Texas on Thursdays everyday unfailingly? Is anyone who you think they are?

This book starts slow but picks up rapidly around the 100 page mark and doesn’t slow down till the end. I guessed both the twist and the fake out from the start. I saw what the end game was going to be so I wasn’t taken in by the fake out but I can see how people wouldn’t see it coming. I’m not the type of reader who can relax and just experience the book, I’m always wondering what the big twist is going to be and I guessed the real identity of the employer pretty early but the fake out almost made me doubt myself. I had already tweeted about figuring it out so when the fake out came, I was like wow, am I going to have to go back to Tayne with my tail between my legs?!

Anyway, if you’re looking for a fun thriller to read, this is the book for you. It reads like a movie. I gave this 3 stars on Goodreads.

Leggy

Fiction, literary fiction, Mystery, thriller

Book Review: The Spare Room by Andrea Bartz

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Kelly packed up her life and moved from Chicago to Philadelphia because her fiance lost his job and found one in Philadelphia. Now there is a pandemic and he has just told Kelly they need to pump the brakes on wedding planning. Kelly doesn’t know a lot of people but has recently rekindled a friendship with her high school friend, Sabrina who is a popular author with a seemingly great life. Her and her husband, Nathan invite her to come stay with them. They have a spare room in their massive house and they could use the company.

Kelly hops on an Amtrak for a fresh start and along the way, she finds herself falling for the couple. They become a throuple until Kelly finds out their last girlfriend is missing and she is not getting good enough answers from her partners. So begins the thriller, as Kelly tries to figure out what is happening while living this new life that she is hiding from her friends and family.

I have never read a book by Bartz but I hear she and her sister are popular in this genre. It’s hard to find a good thriller these days and I didn’t think this was exceptional, it was just mid. I found Kelly to be a little juvenile. I am not sure if that is the right word. She seemed very easily manipulated and probably because she never seemed to have a stance on what she wanted. I mean Nathan and Sabrina had so many red flags and she dug her head in the sand so deep it was unbelievable.

Also, for a book that seemed so adult, I am not sure why the love scenes seemed to be sanitized. I don’t know if this is how it always is in Bartz’s books but why have a character who writes erotic books and have the scenes in the book be vague? The last quarter of the book that could be seen as the culmination of the thriller felt like a rush and in some parts, it came off disjointed. At some point, I just decided to go with it even though I had questions. I might have laughed out loud when the “whodunnit?” was revealed.

I will say that the writing style wasn’t bad at all, and it helped hold my interest in the story. More of the problem lay in the plot and how there were a lot of “raise eyebrow” moments. I think my standards are high when it comes to thrillers, and I haven’t read a good one since Gone Girl (I’m taking recs if you have one!). Not sure I would recommend this one but if you have read it, let me know what you think!

Taynement

literary fiction, Mystery, romance, Uncategorized

Book Review: Some Of It Was Real by Nan Fischer

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“It’s important you understand that I don’t have a clear definition for what I do. Psychics use their intuition or spiritual guides to gain information about the past, present, or future. Mediums are channels that deliver messages from those who have passed over. I’ve been called a psychic-medium, and that’s as good a definition as any. But the truth is that I’m not sure why I hear voices, see images, sing at times, or scribble notes—it just happens and I can’t tell you how because I truly don’t understand it.”

Psychic medium, Sylvie Young, starts every show talking about how she discovered her powers but she leaves out a lot. Like the fact that she isn’t actually sure that she’s a psychic, she’s estranged from her birth parents who think she’s a scammer and her publicist insists that she research some of her guests before every show. Journalist, Thomas Holmes, has it out for people he sees as “grief predators”. After a catastrophic reporting error, he’s anxious to get a great story and prove himself to his editor. So he pitches a story about psychics, he’s determined to prove that Sylvie is a crook. He plants some decoys in the audience and Sylvie falls for it having researched them beforehand. He approaches her and asks her to let him shadow her for the full week before her next big show, make sure she doesn’t research anyone, so that he can either expose her as fake or tell his LA Times audience that her powers are real. He insists that if she is indeed real then she should have no problem with his request.

This book is not your typical rom-com. You can feel them connecting but the romance takes a backstage for most of this book. Sylvie and Thomas play a game of cat and mouse trying to out maneuver each other. I personally found myself rooting for Sylvie even though a part of me wasn’t sure if she was actually a scammer or not. Sylvie takes Thomas through a journey to her past to get him to understand the origin of her powers. She goes back to her adoptive parents’ house and tries to trace who her biological parents were and why her adoptive parents lied to her for so long about where she’s from. All the stories about her parents’ death is starting to sound fake to Sylvie and she decides to trust Thomas to figure it out with her. Thomas thinks this is another fact that proves she’s a liar because if she really has the power to speak to the dead, why has she never spoken to her mother?

Thomas is also hiding a lot of family secrets. Grief vampires feel very personal to him because after his father and brother died, his mother completely lost herself to psychics. Spending all her money trying to contact her late husband and son, trying to find closure and neglecting her actual living son. Both Thomas and Sylvie are struggling with their past and there was something so wholesome about watching two broken but very good people try to fix themselves. They spend so much time together in the book that you can actually see them slowly liking each other. There’s a twist near the end of the book that the author didn’t make a big deal of. She dropped it like the readers weren’t going to go “DANG!” but I actually think that is the beauty of this book. It grabs you in a really surprising way and the plot keeps moving at an alarming pace and doesn’t stop till the very end.

Thomas forces Sylvie to reexamine the way she makes a living while she encourages him to confront his demons and let go of the past. Thomas also struggles with the ethics of writing an expose about someone he is now attracted to. This book is told in alternating point of view chapters, both in first person. It allows you to get into the head of what each character is thinking as they play this game with each other. I will say that if you really are primarily looking for romance with this one, then skip it. I would never recommend this book as a rom com. Even though I bought the fact that Thomas and Sylvie would fall in love after spending so much time together, I didn’t quite buy how it was presented on the page.

I think this is one of the most surprisingly good books I’ve read this year. It really took me unawares. I started it and couldn’t put it down till the very end. I absolutely recommend it. I gave this 3 stars on Goodreads.

Have you read this one? What did you think?

Leggy

Fiction, literary fiction, Mystery, thriller, Uncategorized

Book Review: Wrong Place Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister

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“Banter can hide the worst sins. Some people laugh to hide their shame, they laugh instead of saying I feel embarrassed and small.”

One late October, Jen is waiting up for her son, Todd, to come home after midnight when she witnesses a murder. As she watches from a window, Todd approaches but he’s not alone, he’s walking towards a man, armed. As Jen watches in horror, her son stabs the man fatally for no apparent reason and refuses to talk about why he did it. Todd is now in custody and the police won’t let his parents see him or talk to him plus he’s refusing a lawyer. Jen goes home and falls asleep in deep despair only to wake up in the morning and it’s the day before the murder. Jen keeps sleeping and waking up days before the murder with another chance to try and stop it. Somewhere in the past is the trigger for this murder and Jen has to spot it, catch it in time, to avoid her son’s future being ruined.

“How sinister it is to relive your life backward. To see things you hadn’t at the time. To realize the horrible significance of events you had no idea were playing out around you.”

I’m a fan of people being stuck in a time warp. Living your life backwards? Living an alternative reality? Sign me up. This book was very well written and the time warp very well plotted with the main character actually doing things that I would have done from the start. I enjoyed how fast she understood the predicament she was in and started acting fast. I knew from the start the main person she should be taking a look at so I wasn’t that surprised by the twists and turns the author came up with. But I enjoyed the ride even though I knew where the author was taking us. It did not at all diminish my enjoyment of this book.

This book makes you consider if you really know anything about the life you’re living. There’s something about reliving your life and looking at past scenes with a critical eye as you search your son for the period he became a murderer. Your sweet, funny, nerdy son who cried when his first girlfriend dumped him. What did you miss about his behavior lately? Who is this girl he’s seeing who he doesn’t really let you get to know fully?

At the 75% mark of this book, I became exhausted reading about Jen waking up further and further into the past. The constant past loop of her life made me so tired even though I kept trudging through it. If I was that tired reading Jen’s constant turmoil of spending so long in the past, I can’t even imagine what it was like for her to live it. Even when she thinks, “Okay, I’ve solved it, this is it”- there’s still yet another revelation and even further into the past the thread leads. After a while, I just wanted it to end. I was rooting for Jen all through to save her boy.

I totally recommend this book. If you’re looking for a thriller that makes sense and isn’t trying to be the next Gone Girl, pick up this book. I’ve tried to avoid spoilers in this review and I would recommend just skipping the blurb and diving in. It’s really good writing and she really does make the pay off worth your while. I gave this book 4 stars on Goodreads.

Have you read this one? Let me know in the comments what you thought of it. If you haven’t read it, will you be picking this one up? Let me know as well!

Leggy

Fiction, literary fiction, Mystery

Book Review: Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty

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“Every time she fell out of love with him, he saw it happen and waited it out. He never stopped loving her, even those times when he felt deeply hurt and betrayed by her, even in that bad year when they talked about separating, he’d just gone along with it, waiting for her to come back to him, thanking God and his dad up above each time she did.”

The Delaneys are a tennis fixture in their community. They ran a successful tennis academy for years. The parents, Stan and Joy, have such great chemistry and still beat all their friends in tennis even though they’re retired. After selling their academy, they’re bored and miserable. They’re not the type of couple to have fun doing nothing or to have fun traveling so they’re still trying to discover what getting old means for them.

Their adult children – Logan, Amy, Brooke and Troy, are also trying to figure out what life after tennis looks like for them as well, as they never quite made it to being professional. They’re all deeply affected in one way or another by their lives as tennis young stars and are trying to process their feelings towards the sport and having their parents as coaches.

“That was the secret of a happy marriage: step away from the rage.”

One night, a stranger who introduces herself as Savannah, comes knocking on their door completely bruised up and bleeding claiming her boyfriend hit her. Joy and Stan let her in and let her stay with them believing she is escaping a domestic violence situation to the complete dismay of their children.

Later, when Joy disappears out of the blue, and Savannah is nowhere to be found, the police question the only other person left in the house – Stan. His kids are divided on if he did it or not. Every single detail in their past is being called into question and reexamined in the light of their mother’s disappearance. Moriarty takes us through the history of this family, alternating between flashbacks and the present as we try to figure out what happened to Joy.

“Once you’ve hit a ball there’s no point watching to see where it’s going. You can’t change its flight path now. You have to think about your next move. Not what you should have done. What you do now.”

My first foray into Moriarty was What Alice Forgot – a book I absolutely loved and adored. Since then though, all her other insanely popular books have missed the mark for me, especially the last two. I wasn’t going to read anymore Moriarty because I was tired of chasing the high I got from What Alice Forgot and never finding it. But, I decided to pick this one up because the person who recommended it said they didn’t like her two previous books either. I think she was right. This book is funny, and even though it’s suspenseful it never feels heavy or overdone. It’s just plain good.

“There was nothing worse than having to feel sorry for people who had wronged you. You don’t want lottery wins for your enemies, but you don’t want tragedies for them either. Then they got the upper hand”

If you’re not a fan of alternating timelines then this book is not for you as Moriarty alternates the chapters between flashbacks and the present. I really enjoy stories about dysfunctional families where there’s no abuse or intent to do actual harm exists. I think sometimes just being a family filled with very different personalities and interpretations of your childhood, leads to dysfunction. It’s a fascinating premise to look back at your life and all the little events that shaped it, with a new eye because now you’re looking for if your father could have murdered your mother. Suddenly every single action or mistake they’ve ever made is suddenly seen in a sinister light.

Moriarty’s straightforward writing style serves this book well. The way she makes these astute observations about the Delaneys while peeling back the layers of their relationships to each other and injecting the right dose of humor is impeccable and sometimes makes you forget that you’re actually reading a murder suspense book.

I really enjoyed reading this book. I don’t know if I rated this highly because I was surprised that I was enjoying a Moriarty book after swearing off reading her, but I gave this book 4 stars on Goodreads.

Have you read this one? Let us know in the comments!

Leggy

Fiction, literary fiction, Mystery, thriller

Book Review: Pretty Little Wife by Darby Kane

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“People thought silence meant the absence of noise, and sometimes it did, but other times it screamed so loudly she had to fight not to cover her ears.”

In the middle of an investigation for a missing girl, Lila’s husband, Aaron vanishes. The police are desperate to start looking for him even before 24 hours passes. The town is in an uproar. Aaron is a beloved school teacher who has never missed school. Everyone knows he doesn’t need the money because of a payout he received when his mum died. He is teaching because he loves kids and loves the job.

No one is more worried about Aaron’s whereabouts than Lila because, the last time she saw him, he was dead. Killed by her. And now, the body she set up perfectly to be found and ruled as a suicide, has vanished.

Pretty Little Wife is a domestic thriller and like most domestic thrillers you know exactly what you’re getting. This book wasn’t ground breaking or different. You’re not getting anything new but it was still a fun read. It was a fast read with every new information seeming even more outrageous than the last. Kane takes us through the days leading up to the disappearance. Going through Aaron’s belongings, Lila comes across a cell phone with videos that show her husband in a very compromising position. This is when the illusion of her marriage shatters. All the excuses she had made for her husband’s demands and behaviours over the years now seemed stupid.

This book started off really strong. We’re told upfront that Lila is guilty of murder or at the very least attempted murder since now that the body has disappeared she’s unsure if she was actually successful in her attempt. The first 100 pages flew by, and then half way it veered into very unrealistic territory. I wish the author had taken the time to craft a smarter thriller and not just tried to fit every horrible crime she can think of into one person’s portfolio. It felt like Kane was trying to create the most outrageous and gross villain she could think of.

Overall, there really isn’t much to say about this one without spoiling it. Even though I thought it was just an okay book, I still enjoyed reading it. It’s a very fast paced book and I finished it in one sitting. It was also super predictable, as I figured out who the real villain was very early on in the book. I recommend this one if you’re looking for something quick to get through pretty quickly and I gave this 3 stars on Goodreads.

Have you read this one? If you have let me know what you think in the comments!

Leggy

Book Related Topics, Chick-Lit, Fantasy, Fiction, Historical, literary fiction, Mystery, Uncategorized

Book Review: The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner

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“Healing by way of vengeance … no such thing existed; it never had. Hurting others had only injured me further.”

A female Apothecary, Nella, dispenses poisons in secret, to women who have been wronged by men. She only has two rules – none of her poisons can ever be used to harm a woman and she must record the name of the procurer and the person they intend to kill in her book, for safekeeping and insurance. On a cold February evening, a young 12 year old, Eliza comes to Nella to procure a poison to kill her master courtesy of her beloved mistress. The relationship between Eliza and Nella sets them on a dangerous path. In present day London, Caroline finds a vial near the Thames river as she tries to forget the recent reveal of her husband’s infidelity. This ancient vial leads her down a path of discovery and investigation into the lives of these women that lived 200 years before her.

Sounds like an amazing and intriguing premise for a book right? So why was a book about an apothecary killer so freaking dull?! This book started out with such great promise. I was instantly grabbed by the blurb. This was my Book of the Month pick for March and because of the number of people who picked this particular book there was a delay in delivery as they tried to procure more. I chose this book on the first of March and it only just arrived this week which even made me more excited to crack it open. To say that this story is slow is an understatement. I kept waiting for something to happen but nothing really happens. This book is written in dual timelines. One in the 1700s and the other in present day London. None of these stories intrigued me and frankly, the connection between the women in different timelines was forced at best.

Caroline comes to London to escape, after finding out her husband had an affair. She stumbles across a group of people mud larking and decides to participate. She finds an apothecary bottle inscribed with a picture of a bear and decides to investigate the bottle and I just didn’t understand why she even had the urge to do it. It just seemed so ridiculous. All the ‘conflicts’ in this book were tenuous at best and were always those conflicts arising from misunderstandings and which could have been fixed with a single sentence and I just found that to be lazy writing. I found Caroline’s story entirely pointless and would have preferred if this book focused entirely on Eliza and Nella. Caroline was entirely a caricature of a one dimensional character who put all her dreams on hold in order to get married and cater to a cheating, manipulative husband.

I expected magical realism and a deep look into the lives of women in the 1700s but this book offers nothing of the sort. I also expected mystery and more of a plot and I am so tired of all women’s back stories being about men. The author never even explored the moral ambiguity of making a career out of murdering men just because a man betrayed you in the past. There wasn’t enough character development in this book for me to even justify the lack of a juicy plot by saying it was character driven. The women in this book were all bland and one dimensional. I found it hard to like anyone even when given their back story.

I did not enjoy this book. It was filled with implausible situations, unrealistic emotions and characters that were contrived. The author did a terrible job connecting the present to the past, probably because there was literally nothing connecting the women and her trying to create a connection was unsuccessful. Caroline was boring, one dimensional and frankly, I don’t see how she could have had even a prayer of getting into Cambridge. What kind of history major does not know how to search a library’s historical archives?

Anyways, I gave this 2 stars on Goodreads because I really do think the premise is fantastic. The cover art is gorgeous and it had so much potential. I’m off to apply to Cambridge since everyone can apparently get in!

Leggy