Review: See What I Have Done

See What I Have Done by Sarah Schmidt
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

To be perfectly honest, I knew very little about Lizzie Borden before picking up this book. It just sounded like a great story, and I got hooked pretty quickly. Then I started watching Season 11 of Supernatural (those Winchester boys are always teaching me cool new stuff) and there was an episode about the 'Lizzie Borden case' and I cottoned on that this is something that actually happened.

So that whole historical aspect is pretty cool and I love that it's a fictionalised account that makes assumptions but it's gonna eat away at me not knowing the actual truth. Unsolved mysteries get me every damn time. Gotta admit though - Lizzie is pretty suss.

So I can't say much about the actual characters since they were real people, but the way they were written was fascinating. This novel paints the picture of a sordid family of mostly despicable human beings. (Emma was okay, but she was nuts to put up with Lizzie like she did.)

Lizzie's clearly got a couple of screws loose, and you kinda feel for pops and the step-mum, but then you realise they are also really crummy people. That family just sounds like it was all kinds of messed up.

The entire mystery is absolutely riveting, particularly when you add the whole 'possible poisoning' element. It's so confusing. I wanted Sherlock Holmes to give it a once over because there were just so many dangling threads that seemed impossible to tie together. This case is gonna haunt me, I can feel it. It was an easy hook and I powered through this novel trying (unsuccessfully) to figure it out.

The writing style was a bit odd, and at times it frustrated me, because it felt like it was trying to be clever literary fiction but it was also really simplistic? Skipping words, repetition, etc.

I did really enjoy the personality that was injected into the characters though.

Overall it doesn't give too much more than a Google search turns up, but it does humanise the characters and add a little more feeling into cold hard facts. It was a 4 star read for me, but it was the plot and the madness of the characters that got me, so I feel like I can't really give all that credit to the author. The writing didn't impress me and, as mentioned, it doesn't do anything particularly novel with the story, so there's not really anything new to sink your teeth into. As a novel it was a great read, but for those reading it for a new angle on a historical case, you may be disappointed.

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