A review by sarahkatereads
The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon

emotional mysterious sad slow-paced

3.0

The Frozen River starts out strong and leads you to believe that solving the murder of a man trapped in a frozen river will be the main focus of the story, but after the prologue, the novel quickly suffers from uneven and slow pacing. The main focus of this novel is not murder, but rather Martha’s relationships with her family and the town, as well as the oppression of women in the 18th century. I believe that The Frozen River’s marketing (and even the book’s blurb) as a mystery novel was a bit misleading, as the mystery aspect of the story tends to exist in the periphery of the main plot and never truly feels as fleshed out as the day to day scenes or the birthing scenes. I definitely consider it to fall squarely in the regular historical fiction/drama category, rather than in the historical mystery category. 
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