[Book Review] See What I Have Done by Sarah Schmidt

On the morning of August 4, 1892, Lizzie Borden calls out to her maid: Someone's killed Father. The brutal ax-murderer of Andrew and Abby Borden in their home in Fall River, Massachusetts, leaves little evidence and many unanswered questions. While neighbors struggle to understand why anyone would want to harm the respected Bordens, those close tot he family have a different tale to tell - of a father with an explosive temper; a spiteful stepmother; and two spinster sisters, with a bond even stronger than blood, desperate for their independence.

2 STARS 

I have been highly anticipating this book for a long while now. I have been interested in the Lizzie Borden case for the last few years and when I read the synopsis of this book I was really hyped because the synopsis makes it sound like such an amazing take on the real life murder. Unfortunately I wasn't the biggest fan of the execution.

I was hoping that we would get a different twist or take on the story. It's a fictional novel, so I assumed the author would have a little fun with the information we know about the real life event. Instead it was mostly just a story play by play of what could have happened with an added character who is completely fictional. It was boring for a lot of the story, and it wasn't believable. Which was surprising, since the event actually happened.

The characters weren't that great, Lizzie is supposed to be in her twenties but acted like a whiny teenager, so did her sister Emma. According to the synopsis we are supposed to believe that Lizzie and Emma have "a bond even stronger than blood" but it didn't seem like that. I didn't feel much of a connection to them at all. The rest of the characters were fine, I didn't have much of a reaction to any of them. I felt pretty "meh" about most of the characters.

The story itself got exciting during the event of the actual murder but other than that the story slowly drags on and it's very anti climatic. Which I mean, sure, it's anti climatic because it's an unsolved mystery, but because most of the story was so boring I was hoping at least the end was going to be exciting. The writing itself was fine, I didn't feel like it was badly written, just the story wasn't the story I thought it was going to be, unfortunately. 

Overall, I don't know if I recommend this to anyone who already knows the story of Lizzie Borden and the Borden family. If you don't know much about the story maybe it's more exciting, but I don't doubt there are better books on the topic. I am really disappointed in this book, I had such high hopes for it.

Thanks for reading!