something about this didn’t quite work for me. i’m not sure why, because the plot itself is interesting enough, and i found myself really empathising with Blanche, but i feel like there was something missing which was preventing me from really feeling engaged in the book. it’s a very well researched book, with some enlightening insight in the afterword on the historical data used to build this story. the heat wave and epidemic are written in very well, to the point where they permeate every sentence in the book and create this really tense, uncomfortable tension in the air. i think the structure really threw me off, and i didn’t understand why we had to constantly go back and forth between pre murder and post murder. it also didn’t help that my life at the moment only allowed me to read a few pages at once, and since these are massive chapters, dipping in and out of the book for a month was definitely not the best choice. i think i would recommend this book to someone who likes historical fiction, but a massive trigger warning for sexual abuse and violence (my edition is very misleading, calling it “elegant, erotic, and witty”). 

compelling plot and story (based on a real event) but the writing itself is largely overdone… i loved the research into songs and 1870s SF!