Carina

WOW!!! I would be shocked if this wasn’t at least nominated for Book of the Year. This was such an incredible read, touching on themes of love, heartbreak, betrayal, and the fact that everyone has something to hide. I was most touched by the perspectives of the various women in this book. With each one, the reader will notice that freedom and what it means to them (along with what they would sacrifice in order to obtain it) is a shared theme. I can’t say much more about it without spoiling it, other than the fact that I simply couldn’t put it down and it did not at all feel like a 400+ page read. Brava to Liz Moore on a masterpiece!

Yeah, I was starting to question how much I was enjoying this book from about 20%-40% of the way through the book, but I really ended up liking most of the characters (especially Vince and Anne) so

I'm a little confused by the ending, but I'm assuming Janet knew what was going on because Peter kept giving her the jewelry of the dead women. When he was about to get SNATCHED, she wanted to throw away all of the jewelry that Tommy ended up finding and then she finally throws it all into the ocean in the end. Maybe she didn't know at first ... but I'm not about to give her the benefit of the doubt

Feeling really bad for Tommy but hoping he gets justice in a later book

I liked the ending as well. The whole thing read much better than a lot of serial killer books out there now, which are super tropey and don't really pull the reader in at all. This one does a good job of keeping things fresh/unique and giving you enough likable characters to have someone to cheer on AND keep you guessing.

This was my first feminist lit novel. It was written in 1899 so the language wasn't super accessible to me and it took a little more effort to get to the meat of the story. It featured a lot of luxuriated romantic description and I felt like the plot was really like 50 pages long if you cut away the pages and pages of setting description. Ultimately, this was my first encounter with the drowned self-actualized woman motif and I felt extreme pity for Edna. One of my greatest fears is being discounted or feeling trapped, so I easily sympathized with her. Still, my heart hurt a lot when I finished it and it felt very bleak. I felt like I learned a new perspective from this book, but it didn't have any immediate takeaways - however, I did notice that the feminist themes in the book were limited to affluent white women and the role starkly contrasted with the roles of the Black and Hispanic women in the book. I can't help but wonder if that was intentional as a part of the irony of the story, but given the context, I don't think that would make sense. Overall, I rate it 3/5 (really 3.5) stars because I respect the book for its revolutionary qualities and appreciated the depiction of women's relationships in the 1800s. I wish it didn't make me feel so empty after I finished it, but it was good and made me want to read another novel of similar caliber.