Scan barcode
A review by bexellency
My Murder by Katie Williams
4.0
As this book began, it wasn’t what I expected. Much more of a sci fi clone story than a murder mystery. I stuck with it and quickly was drawn into the world, the clones reflecting on whether they were different people than their other selves, the poignant zings about the values we instill in girls. It’s science fiction/speculative fiction without a lot of complicated world building, which I’ve found I no longer have patience for. There just enough sci fi tech to enable to story plot, but not beyond that and that tech is not much of a leap from where we are today so it felt familiar-ish. The book could have been light and trite being sci fi, murder mystery, but it took on some huge themes.
For example… “We girls had been taught mindedness from a young age. Kindness had been stressed. But there was another lesson in that, one the adults hadn’t known they were teaching. How kindness could be expected of a girl, demanded of her really, and then levied against her.”
As a runner, I didn’t enjoy that our main character had been attacked and killed while out on a run (because of where it sent my thoughts, not because it was a bad plot point).
As the mystery unfurled, I remained hooked and could see all kinds of theories - such as her partner, her boss, Odd, mother of the other murdered women who was trying to get the commission to bring her daughter back and thought of spawning the celebrity campaign. I never did think of the commission itself. And I certainly didn’t think of the actual story and ending. Which wasn’t for me.
After all the hefty content on women and fear and danger and assault (because of course you can replace murder with assault and get to what the clones were going through here in real life), a story of post partum depression wasn’t the unraveling I had in mind. It’s a bummer, I loved so much about this book - such as the online hordes figuring out a way to turn on all the online Edward Earlys - but that ending doesn’t speak much to women like me who aren’t mothers.
Perhaps part of my reaction is having recently finished another book that was all about motherhood and women feeling they are being a “bad” mother and was surprised/dismayed to have stumbled into another story about that. I wanted this to be a story about women, their common experiences, and how they bond together. And a lot of it was. But not the final denouement.
For example… “We girls had been taught mindedness from a young age. Kindness had been stressed. But there was another lesson in that, one the adults hadn’t known they were teaching. How kindness could be expected of a girl, demanded of her really, and then levied against her.”
As a runner, I didn’t enjoy that our main character had been attacked and killed while out on a run (because of where it sent my thoughts, not because it was a bad plot point).
As the mystery unfurled, I remained hooked and could see all kinds of theories -
After all the hefty content on women and fear and danger and assault (because of course you can replace murder with assault and get to what the clones were going through here in real life), a story of post partum depression wasn’t the unraveling I had in mind. It’s a bummer, I loved so much about this book - such as the online hordes figuring out a way to turn on all the online Edward Earlys - but that ending doesn’t speak much to women like me who aren’t mothers.
Perhaps part of my reaction is having recently finished another book that was all about motherhood and women feeling they are being a “bad” mother and was surprised/dismayed to have stumbled into another story about that. I wanted this to be a story about women, their common experiences, and how they bond together. And a lot of it was. But not the final denouement.