Reviews with content warning for Sexism - The Book of Cold Cases

Reviews tagging 'Sexism'

The Book of Cold Cases by Simone St. James

18 reviews

ambenicole418's review against another edition

dark funny mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

I really like this book! It’s a murder mystery with a touch of ghost story. We don’t get to see the bulk of the ghost stuff until the last half of the book (because who is haunting the house is important to the overarching murder mystery plot), but when you do get to the parts about the ghosts you can feel the intensity and spookiness of the whole situation. Overall, while I did take a few issues with the book I really enjoyed this story and would recommend to anyone looking for a murder mystery/thriller book.

Dislikes:

I didn’t really like that they never explained the haunting of the house, specifically, they never explain why the house itself feels sentient in the fact that it seems to be taunting Beth at times with her alcoholism and images of her father or why Marianna is also haunting the house.
The first and last time we see her ghost towards the beginning of the book she is opening doors in the house looking for someone and then banging on Beth’s door loudly for her to open it, but they never give an explanation for why she does this. We also don’t find out what happened to Marianna’s ghost at the end of the story. At the end of the book they explain that the house is still haunted and mention that there are now two ghosts in the window which we assume to be Lily and Beth, but they never say anything about Marianna’s ghost.
Is she still there and if not what made her finally leave?
And while the ending was satisfying enough I wasn’t a huge fan of the some of the choices.
The way Shea paints Beth as a muderous villian and makes it her mission to put Beth away for Lily’s death you would think that Beth killed an innocent person in cold blood. The police were never gonna put Lily away for the murders she committed. There was no evidence and the only person alive that even knew she existed and what she was doing was Beth. Lily made it clear that she wasn’t going to stop killing people and she was probably gonna force Beth to kill too. I mean even in death she was still trying to kill people. I’m not saying Beth was a righteous hero or anything, but by killing Lily she stopped more innocent people from dying, and I don’t think she deserves to be condemned and jailed for that especially at Beth’s ripe age of 60+ years old.

Content Warnings