The Twisted Thread by Charlotte Bacon
My rating: 3/5 cats
this book is fine. it is another one of those secret history knockoffs i can’t seem to get enough of, even though they are usually underwhelming.
this is a multi-perspective novel, where a bunch of characters are allowed to discover different elements of the background story of a young rich girl found murrrrrderrrrred in her boarding-school dorm room, where she has recently given birth to a secret baby. but where is the baby?? who’s its daddy? how did she die? what dark secrets does this school have in its past?? why are there so many storylines? does every book need at least two love triangles? why does carol goodman blurb every book that claims to be like secret history? why do i keep reading these??
it’s fine; it’s just not a home run. it may have been better to pare down the scope of the novel somewhat; some of the plot-flaps seem irrelevant, and some characters do not get enough development because the POV keeps shifting. and then some of the characters seem to have been written just to tangentially introduce other characters—it gets a bit sloppy. i’m not sure if the secondary storylines were supposed to be distractions from the main plot, or red herrings, or what, but at least of them seem totally inconsequential. i say “why”?
but it was a good train-ride book—it was much better than watching yonkers zip by at night. people who like learning dirty little secrets of the rich and idle will probably diggit, and it is a fine mystery; i just think there were some glitches in its transmission. but people who are as sleepy as i am right now shouldn’t write book reports.
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