author: Jennifer Donnelly
published by: Random House
released: October 27th 2015
pages: 488
my rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Jo Montfort is beautiful and rich, and soon—like all the girls in her class—she’ll graduate from finishing school and be married off to a wealthy bachelor. Which is the last thing she wants. Jo secretly dreams of becoming a writer—a newspaper reporter like the trailblazing Nellie Bly.
Wild aspirations aside, Jo’s life seems perfect until tragedy strikes: her father is found dead. Charles Montfort accidentally shot himself while cleaning his revolver. One of New York City’s wealthiest men, he owned a newspaper and was partner in a massive shipping firm, and Jo knows he was far too smart to clean a loaded gun.
The more Jo uncovers about her father’s death, the more her suspicions grow. There are too many secrets. And they all seem to be buried in plain sight. Then she meets Eddie—a young, brash, infuriatingly handsome reporter at her father’s newspaper—and it becomes all too clear how much she stands to lose if she keeps searching for the truth. Only now it might be too late to stop.
The past never stays buried forever. Life is dirtier than Jo Montfort could ever have imagined, and the truth is the dirtiest part of all.
For some unknown reason, I don't read historical fiction books that often, even though I almost always love them. I heard some great things about this book that made me read it and these people weren't wrong when they said it is amazing.
Jo Montfort struggles to fulfill everyones excpectations and just wants to become a writer and ask lots of questions. But before her father dies and she meets Eddie, she tries her best to oppress her feelings and be happy with the life she's given. I think her character was amazing, I could relate to her and her desire to become a writer and know things she's not supposed to know and I think lots of other people can too. But even though she isn't the lady everyone thinks she is, she is still a girl living in the 19th century and behaves accordingly. I liked that aspect of her too, because she was raised to think a certain way after all and to ignore that would make her character less believable and not fitting for the story.
I'm not going to talk too much about the mystery because it's a mystery and everyone needs to find out about it by themselves (duh) but what I will say is that it was very well done. I think I mentioned before that I'm not that good at predicting plot twists but I don't think anyone can see through the whole mystery. Also it seemed to fit perfectly when it finally all makes sense.
The romance in this book was very well done as well but I didn't like it as much and it was the reason I gave it 4.5 stars. Don't get me wrong I still really really enjoyed it but some things just annoyed me a little. First of all: instant love. I don't really like it but it can still be done in a ok way which the author did here, so I'm not too mad about it. The thing that bothered me way more was that their love (I'm not going to say with who even though it's probably obvious to most people) was secret and forbidden and at the same time she's supposed to marry someone else.
But other than that this book is basically perfect. The balance between living an upper class life and the investigation of murder in the ugliest parts of New York was done perfectly. Also all the people Jo meets throughout this book are really unique and the female friendship is just great. I loved reading those parts most of all and wish there were more of them (girl power!).
The book started out good, a little slow paced at times but promising, but it turned out to be so much more and at some point I absolutely fell in love with it.
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