These Shallow Graves by Jennifer Donnelly

Hardcover, 496 pages

Release Date: October 27, 2015
Published by: Random House Delacorte
Stand-alone
Source: Netgalley
For fans of: Mysteries, Romance, Historical, YA


     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.

*MY THOUGHTS*

     Truth be told, the main reason I wanted this book so bad was the mystery and the cover. The cover is gorgeous and the synopsis talks about a woman who did more than what that time frame would allow. But when it came down to it, this book just wasn’t for me.
     Jo is a woman of stature in her corner of New York City. She attended a great finishing school, had a great eligible bachelor after her, and was still very smart. And then her father dies. At first it’s said he committed suicide, but as secrets come out, there is way more going on than she thought.
     The main reason I had to DNF this was it was just SO FREAKIN SLOW. There was nothing wrong with the writing or anything else, it was just too slow. I made it to page 125, and thought once the mystery had started it would get a little better…. It didn’t. I was still really bored and couldn’t make myself like it anymore.
     I did like the realistic elements in it like Nellie Bly. As a diverse blogger, I try to celebrate diversity any chance I get. And this one’s came in the form of a woman who did more than what she “should have been doing” at that time period and it came in the form of the character and the realistic character Nellie Bly. It made me like Jo a little more because of that.
     Just because it wasn’t for me, it still had some pretty promising elements. I can see this one being a great book to someone else, but the development was just too slow. Give it a try and you may like it!
Overall, I give this

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