These Shallow Graves
Author: Jennifer Donnelly
488 Pages
Published: October 27, 2015
Reviewed By: Kim
Kim’s Rating: 5 Stars
Description from Amazon:
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 dreams of becoming a writer—a newspaper reporter.
Wild aspirations aside, Jo’s life seems perfect until tragedy strikes: her father is found dead. The story is that Charles Montfort shot himself while cleaning his revolver, but the more Jo hears about her father’s death, the more something feels wrong. And then she meets Eddie—a young, smart, 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. But 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 this time the truth is the dirtiest part of all.
Kim’s Review:
I loved this book! A good female protagonist that I actually like! I’ll admit that for some reason, I usually don’t like female leads. I wish I could tell you why, but I can’t put my finger on that reason. But Jo Montfort is pretty fantastic. I wouldn’t call her a badass, but she’s well on her way. Most spoiled brats don’t admit that they are spoiled. But Jo gains a self-awareness in this book that is refreshing. She starts out as a privileged, rich socialite but throughout the story, starts questioning her place in life. Does she really want to marry a guy that she doesn’t love? Just to sit on her ass for the rest of her life doing nothing but entertaining and birthing babies? That may be the future for some women, and it’s a noble one, but not for Jo. She wants to be a reporter, to see the world outside her small Gramercy neighborhood. Her father ends up dead, and though she is grieving, she refuses to accept the status quo of the story that the police and newspapers are selling. Then she meets Eddie Gallagher. My new book boyfriend!!!!! She crushes on him the same way that I crush on my husband. Hearing that other women are also attracted to those little parts of a man like the back of his neck, or his forearms, or that little bit of chest hair that peaks out of his open collar, makes me feel not so weird for doing so. Watching their relationship grow became one of the biggest pleasures of my life! And we haven’t even gotten to the mystery yet! But I have the tendency to spoil key details, so I’ll just say that it’s an awesome mystery that kept me going all the way to the end. But without making me feel stupid when everything is revealed. Some things I totally called earlier in the story, other things shocked me when they came to light. I recommend this book to everybody! Especially to those who love mysteries or historical fiction. I think y’all are gonna love it!