This book is such a missed opportunity. When She Woke takes place some time in the future, in a dystopian United States where religion now supercedes politics. Hannah Payne has been arrested and charged with murder after she gets an abortion. Her punishment is “chroming”–her entire body is dyed red, signifying she is a murderer (Chromes can be yellow, orange, red, blue, green, or purple depending on their crime). It’s hard to say what this book is about, because a million things happen to Hannah […]
Babes in the Wood
I put off reading this book for months and months. I’d heard it was absolutely terrifying, and I’m a fraidy-cat. It wasn’t terrifying. It also wasn’t worth the wait. The narrator, a woman named Leonora (Nora), is a writer living alone in London. Like every young, single female protagonist in every mystery that’s been published in the past 10 years or so, Nora’s hiding a dark secret from her past, something that will be slowly revealed throughout the course of the novel. She heads to […]
Hades Hath No Fury
This is the second Hilary Tamar mystery I’ve read. Just like the last one, this one was endlessly entertaining and charming. The Hilary Tamar mysteries revolve around a group of five young barristers in London and their mentor, Professor Tamar. In this one, all five barristers are involved in a probate hearing for a large, wealthy family. The mystery happens when a member of that family is found dead, having either fallen off a roof, jumped, or been pushed. When another family member is lost […]
A Graveyard Where Nothing Stays Buried
So, turns out some of those Civil War reenactors aren’t just pretending. I’ve never lived below the Mason-Dixon line, so this book is a bit of a shock. Confederates in the Attic is Tony Horwitz’s first-person account of his journey through the South, exploring Civil War battlefields, visiting memorials and museums, and taking part in reenactments with a “hard-core” group (hard-core here meaning they throw away the apple he wanted to eat because that particular kind didn’t exist in the 1860s, confiscate his sleeping roll, […]