Scan barcode
A review by neilazaara
Maude Horton's Glorious Revenge by Lizzie Pook
adventurous
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
I feel a bit betrayed by the title and cover of this book. As much as I loved the author’s debut novel, this one felt a bit too slow and had too many POVs for me.
The plot doesn’t really focus on the revenge part until the very last quarter of the book and from the cover I was lead to believe that we would be exposed to a string of poisonings. Instead we’re following the granddaughter of an apothecary who’s on a mission to find out what happened to her sister. In my opinion the apothecary setting was underused. As a chemist we could have gone a completely different way with poisons also being a big fascination point in the Victorian era. Instead, the book focuses with the fascination with public hangings which gave a really eerie atmosphere to the book. I love this setting and premise but then why use a chemist as a main character and put a massive bottle that’s likely to be poison on the cover. It’s setting up readers for disappointment. ‘Glorious revenge’ implies to me some plotting and scheming with a very satisfactory ending for everyone by giving the wrongdoer their comeuppance and the ‘hero’ getting their revenge. Unfortunately, it didn’t really feel all that glorious and although some revenge was taken out, it felt overall like Maude had not too much to do with it.
The writing is engaging and easy to follow. I just wasn’t totally sold on the characters, probably because it was divided between our 3 main characters and the reader doesn’t get enough time to really get to know anyone in depth.
Overall, the atmosphere, setting and writing are really good but the pacing and marketing of this book really let it down.
The plot doesn’t really focus on the revenge part until the very last quarter of the book and from the cover I was lead to believe that we would be exposed to a string of poisonings. Instead we’re following the granddaughter of an apothecary who’s on a mission to find out what happened to her sister. In my opinion the apothecary setting was underused. As a chemist we could have gone a completely different way with poisons also being a big fascination point in the Victorian era. Instead, the book focuses with the fascination with public hangings which gave a really eerie atmosphere to the book. I love this setting and premise but then why use a chemist as a main character and put a massive bottle that’s likely to be poison on the cover. It’s setting up readers for disappointment. ‘Glorious revenge’ implies to me some plotting and scheming with a very satisfactory ending for everyone by giving the wrongdoer their comeuppance and the ‘hero’ getting their revenge. Unfortunately, it didn’t really feel all that glorious and although some revenge was taken out, it felt overall like Maude had not too much to do with it.
The writing is engaging and easy to follow. I just wasn’t totally sold on the characters, probably because it was divided between our 3 main characters and the reader doesn’t get enough time to really get to know anyone in depth.
Overall, the atmosphere, setting and writing are really good but the pacing and marketing of this book really let it down.