These Shallow Graves by Jennifer Donnelly
Pages: 320
Publish date: November 2015
Publisher: Five Mile Press (Hot Key Books)
ISBN: 9781471405150
Purchase: Book Depository – Amazon UK – Amazon US – Amazon AU
Josephine Montfort is from one of New York’s oldest, most respected, and wealthiest families. Like most well-off girls of the era her future looks set—after a finishing school education, she will be favourably married off to a handsome wealthy gentleman. But Jo wants a more meaningful and exciting life: she wants to be an investigative journalist like her heroine Nellie Bly.
But when Jo’s father dies after an alleged accident, she begins to investigate his death with the help of a young reporter, Eddie Gallagher. It quickly becomes clear he was murdered, and in their race against time to discover the culprit and his motive, Jo and Eddie find themselves not only battling dark characters of the violent and gritty streets of New York, but also their growing feelings for each other.
These Shallow Graves:
Five Mile Press (Hot Key Books) sent me a copy of These Shallow Graves by Jennifer Donnelly, in exchange for an honest review. This has in no way influenced my thoughts and feelings about the book.
I don’t read a lot of historical fiction, I just find it hard to connect with character, how they live, what they believe and so on but when I read the synopsis of These Shallow Graves, I thought it was going to something that I liked and I wasn’t wrong.
These Shallow Graves is a lot of mystery and a lot of historical fiction so I wouldn’t recommend it to the younger side of young adult unless they are familiar with terms used but overall I thoroughly enjoyed the read.
These Shallow Graves follows protagonist, Josephine Montfort, a girl from high class. Jo comes from one of the wealthiest, respected and oldest families of New York and like all girls in her class her life is set out for her. She is set to graduate and then be married off to a wealthy bachelor – but that isn’t what she wants. She wants to become a writer – a news reporter. Then her father shorts himself. Jo knows better than anyone that her father would be more careful. So she sets out to find the truth, even if they are not what she wants to know. With the help of handsome Eddie; a reporter at her father’s newspaper, they uncover things that are buried beyond sight.
As a child, she’d thought all the noise and commotion was the most wild, wonderful game, but as she’d grown older, she understood why everyone rushed around so: they were chasing a story.
These Shallow Graves overarching plot is pretty predictable. Wealthy girl meets not to well of handsome man, they start to fall and all shit breaks loose. But then everything else with the plot is all over the place and you could not truly guess what was coming next.
I love books that keep me on my toes. I like that I don’t know what is going to happen, but I also like that I can put pieces together slowly and start a puzzle. I love crime TV shows and These Shallow Graves is quite similar expect that it’s historical fiction.
Jo is a little naïve and I want to hit her across the head a couple of times, but I like her fire. I like that she passionate and keeps to what she wants to do. She doesn’t let anyone stop her (even though it got her into trouble a couple of times) it was nice to see.
Eddie – oh how I loved Eddie. He was this, awesome reporter who couldn’t help but always be by Jo’s side. I loved that he didn’t stop Jo from doing things like most male protagonist do these days in YA. He told her maybe she shouldn’t do the things she did but hey she did them anyway.
“You, on the other hand, wish to know things. And no one can forgive a girl for that.”
All the characters were quite interesting and it’s wonderful seeing character that are there as people are not as props. Everyone played a part in the novel. If they didn’t have an impact on the story line they had an impact on a character.
I liked the writing style of Jennifer Donnelly. For a historical fiction it was quite easy to read and understand what was happening without getting over my head in words and sayings that I don’t know what they mean. It was engaging and kept on pulling me and pulling me.
Although, I was a little disappointed in the ending, I was expecting more. All the hype from solving the crimes that happened and then the ending just deflated it all.
Overall all I really enjoyed These Shallow Graves, it was an interesting read and something that I would recommend to historical fiction or crime lovers. These Shallow Graves is a fantastic historical fiction packed with crime solving, romance, heartbreak and tears.
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