The Corpse Flower by Anne Mette Hancock
Length: 336 Pages
Genres: Mystery and Thriller
Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars

Trigger Warnings in this book for Graphic Depictions of Child Sexual Abuse, Murder, Blood, Suicide, Violence, Rape and Assault

I'm still on a Nordic Noir kick, and I'm happy to report that The Corpse Flower scored much higher with me than the last did. It's been on my radar for awhile, was pitched as Girl with the Dragon Tattoo meets Sharp Objects, so of course my expectations were practically sky high!

Heloise Kaldan is a reporter for the Demokratisk Dagblad, and after an article of hers bombs due to a false report from an otherwise reliable source (who just so happens to be her lover...), all Heloise wants is a break and the go-ahead to continue working. What she doesn't expect is a cryptic letter from one of Denmark's most wanted killers, a woman named Anna Kiel. In the letters, she claims to be connected to Heloise, she even knows Heloise's favorite flower (the lupine, Anna's is the corpse flower) and lucky number. But Heloise knows nothing Anna, beyond what was reported about her: that she killed a bigshot lawyer in cold-blood with a kitchen knife and stood in front of a surveillance camera afterwards, staring, as if in a dare. And then, she disappeared without a trace.

Erik Schäfer is the cop who worked Anna's case. She has been gone for years now, and the last thing he expects is a little old lady, fresh from a vacation in France, to show up, claiming to have seen her. Then, he sees the photo she took and he knows without a doubt--it's her.

One question still remains: was Anna nothing but a crazed woman who chose her victim randomly? Or did she have a connection, just as she has with Heloise? And why, after so long, has she decided to speak up?

I love a thriller with an interesting setting, and the city of Copenhagen, along with bits of France, was just the icing on the cake for this novel. Heloise is a fun and resilient heroine, smart and brassy but with a heart of gold, much like Erik, who steers clear of the usual gruff and miserable cop trope. And Anna was the best part of all, reminding me very much of Lisbeth Salander. My one quibble was the I would have liked a few more clues towards the connection between Heloise and Anna. I hate it in a thriller when the mystery is one that I'm not given the opportunity to guess at myself. Other than that, I highly recommend The Corpse Flower and look forward to the next book in the series!

Shanghai Girls by Lisa See

Shanghai Girls by Lisa See

Length: 309 Pages
Genres: Historical Fiction
Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars

Trigger Warnings in this book for Graphic Depictions of Rape, Violence, Blood, Racism and Xenophobia, Suicide, An Intense Birth Scene, Illness and Death

"The last thing May says to me is 'When our hair is white, we'll still have our sister love.'"

My sister, who is a huge fan of See, has been trying to get me to read something of hers for years now. Finally, I decided to read the one I had on my list: Shanghai Girls.

Beginning in 1937 in Shanghai, the "Paris of Asia", this novel follows the Chin sisters: the eldest, Pearl, who is a Dragon in the Chinese Zodiac which makes her strong and stubborn (sometimes to a fault), and May, who is a Sheep. Sheep are gentle, creative, and will always need someone to look after them. They are twenty-one and eighteen, work as "beautiful girls", posing for an artist to paint them to use their likenesses in ads and calendars, and stay up late going from club to café. Their life is that of a modern Chinese girl, one not bound by tradition and filial piety.

And then, their world crumbles. Their father announces he has lost all of their money, and to keep their house he has arranged marriages for each of them to "Gold Mountain Men", Chinese men from California. No matter how they fight they cannot win. Pearl is heartbroken, because her one-true love is the artist Z.G., but when she confesses her feelings he brushes her off. What follows is a tale of heartbreak, set amongst the beginnings of the Sino-Japanese war, as Pearl and May fight to escape the invading Japanese and get to America. But America is not a place of endless opportunity, like they were told. America has its own problems, from the Depression to Pearl Harbor, and their fight will be one that goes on for many mores years and claims many that are important to the girls.

The heart of Shanghai Girls is always the relationship between the sisters, which goes from caring to fractured to anger and resentment and back again. It is a true story of "sister love", and "mother love", too, and how strong those bonds are in even the darkest of times.

This book is dark, yes, as it features some of the darkest moments in the history of mankind, but throughout it all there is hope and love, as bright and searing as it can be. A must-read for women everywhere!

Book Review: A Rip Through Time by Kelley Armstrong

A Rip Through Time by Kelley Armstrong
Length: 342 Pages
Genre: Historical Mystery
Rating: 4 out 5 Stars

Trigger Warnings in this book for Murder, Racism and Xenophobia, Some Gore and Blood

So, I've had a few Kelley Armstrong's books on my TBR for a while now, but when I read about her latest, featuring a Vancouver Detective who travels back in time to Victorian Edinburgh, I knew I had to snatch it up! I love anything Victorian, especially anything that features a crime and the medicine of the era (those Victorians were delightfully morbid), and I just thought it was a great idea to utilize a modern female protagonist thrust into those circumstances! Now, I think Armstrong can count me among her loyal legion of fans. And, not to sound like Mallory doing her best impression of Victorian speech, but I am demanding the sequel forthwith!

Mallory Atkinson is visiting Edinburgh, and not this time for a summer away, like in her youth, but to be with her dying grandmother. At night she jogs through the Old Town, desperate for some sort of relief that she knows won't come until the tragic happens, and her grandmother is lost to her forever. On one of these runs, she hears the screams of a woman coming from a dark alley, and, being a Detective back in Vancouver, she simply can't ignore it. Mallory tiptoes in, only to find...a strange sort of projection. That of a woman, dressed like she is from hundred of years ago. Then, Mallory is attacked from behind. As she struggles to free herself, the other woman is attacked too. It is the last thing she sees before she loses consciousness.

When Mallory comes to, she finds herself in a dark room, wearing a corset and dress and...not herself at all, but a young woman with blonde hair. A maid, it turns out, to the infamous Dr. Duncan Gray, an undertaker and medical examiner--a maid who just so happened to live 150 years prior. Now, living as Caitriona, Mallory struggles to make sense of what happened and to find a way back to 2019 and her grandmother. Through hard work, determination, and a fair bit of subterfuge, Mallory is able to impress her employer enough that he allows her to help him with his more bloody bits of work. When a murder occurs that has striking similarities to her attack in 2019, Mallory wonders if somehow her violent future has followed her into the past.

Mallory was a great heroine, smart and funny and compulsively readable, and I really enjoyed the secondary characters as well, from Dr. Gray (who I expect to become a love interest later in the series), to his sister, Isla, a chemist and woman ahead of her time, to Detective McCreadie and the other servants. The mystery is fun, and even has the killer creating an homage to Jack the Ripper, twenty years before his infamous crimes. It was obvious Armstrong did her research well, and I have to say I really enjoyed learning a bit about a Victorian funeral home and the burgeoning science of forensic examination, which makes most of the police and population suspicious of Dr. Grey in fear of his dark "predilections". If only they knew!

A historical mystery outside of the usual box and full of vivid characters and places, A Rip Through Time is an exciting start to a series that will keep you waiting, or begging, for more.