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These Shallow Graves by Jennifer Donnelly
4.5 ★'s
What's It About?
Jo Montfort is beautiful and rich, and soon—like all the girls in her class—she’ll graduate from finishing school and be married off to a wealthy bachelor. Which is the last thing she wants. Jo dreams of becoming a writer—a newspaper reporter.
Wild aspirations aside, Jo’s life seems perfect until tragedy strikes: her father is found dead. The story is that Charles Montfort shot himself while cleaning his revolver, but the more Jo hears about her father’s death, the more something feels wrong. And then she meets Eddie—a young, smart, infuriatingly handsome reporter at her father’s newspaper—and it becomes all too clear how much she stands to lose if she keeps searching for the truth. But now it might be too late to stop. The past never stays buried forever. Life is dirtier than Jo Montfort could ever have imagined, and this time the truth is the dirtiest part of all.
AmazonWhat Did I Think?
What a beautifully written book. It's a mix of historical fiction, murder-mystery, coming-of-age, and just a little romance. Seemed that romance was not the main reason for marriages in those times. Jo was a wonderful main character. In spite of her sheltered upbringing and being a great deal naive she came across as a girl/woman (she's 17) that knew what she wanted out of life and was willing to risk everything, including her life, to achieve it. The character of Eddie Gallagher...the newspaper reporter who agreed to help Jo...was such an asset to the the making of the entire story line in his attempt to not only find the answer to Jo's father's murderer but in helping Jo learn about the other side of life. Even though the book lost a half a star for me simply because I was a little disappointed with the ending...I would still highly recommend this book to anyone that enjoys a historical mystery at it's best.
