deni's reviews
42 reviews

There’s nothing wrong with the book - Bledsoe has a nice writing style that’s focused on being informative without making his biases too obvious, at least of the little bit I read, and I was interested in seeing where his narrative went. I just found myself annoyed with the people involved in the story, which was totally a personal problem. If you want to read about rich people drama leading to murder, you’ll probably get farther than I did.

I was torn between giving this book two or three stars. Fleeman clearly did his research on the case; if you want the facts, this book will give it to you. I just really hated how he chose to construct his narrative. The murder, investigation, and legal proceedings are all written in chronological order. It feels like you’re just reading Fleeman’s notes rather than a compelling narrative of these events.

It doesn’t help that his writing style often feels like he’s just trying to reach a word count rather than communicate information to the reader in an effective, thoughtful way. That makes the final few pages jarring - after spending  300 pages trying to appear impartial and unbiased, Fleeman suddenly starts trying to get into the heads of the two accused and project feelings onto them in a really weird way. It was just the icing on the cake for an altogether frustrating book. If you want to learn about the murder case of Rusty Sneiderman, you’re better off just reading the Wikipedia article.

Had to return it to the library.

I was reading the ebook, but it's so horribly formatted that I couldn't get through it. I might get a physical copy in the future.

This is a very slow-paced book. It started picking up around the 300 page mark, but I had to return my library book by then. I hope to come back and finish this in the future!

This is a history of racial science in the U.S. and its eventual replacement by the study of human prehistory, with a specific focus on how it fueled decades of bone-collecting that continue to affect the universities and museums that hold onto these remains today. I was already familiar with a few cases or people that were mentioned, but Redman carefully weaves them together into a much larger narrative that I was shockingly ignorant of. We’re still dealing with the consequences of an era that has largely been swept under the rug in public memory and I’m grateful that this book makes that history a little more accessible. I’d recommend it to anyone interested in the histories of race, museums, or anthropology.

I’ve been enjoying the series so far. I really liked this one - no spoilers, but there’s a couple turning points/reveals in this book that I’m excited to see play out in the next book. I think my favorite thing in this part of the series is that Shiva is starting to reveal how much everything is affecting her and Teacher is figuring out how to deal with that.

I enjoyed this book! The characters were fun to follow and, by the halfway point, I was really rooting for them to get their HEA. I ended up giving it a 3.5 just because the writing wasn’t as strong as Sebastian’s other books, mainly with backstory reveals not feeling very natural and the miscommunication got more frustrating than fun at times. Still, I recommend this if you want a m/m historical fix! Reading The Lawrence Browne Affair is a must before reading this, though - it’s a spin-off and would feel awkward without that background.