Title: Black Widows
Author: Cate Quinn
Source: Netgalley UK
Publishing date: 4th February 2021
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟
This was a really enjoyable read. The storyline was very unusual which led to an interesting tale creating suspense along with character detail. The book is classed as a thriller and while it definitely had a thrilling feel and kept me guessing till the end, it also had an element of character driven fiction and I found the whole story compelling. The tale is set within the Mormon community of the Latter Day Saints. The main characters are Mormons in a polygamous marriage, this starts the wives off on a bad footing as not only has their husband been murdered, their lifestyle is questioned while the police try to decide which of his wives killed him. The investigation not only uncovers the life they had made with Blake, it also uncovers hidden secrets in the past of the three wives, none of them is who they seem. While they try to find out who killed Blake alongside the police, they find out a lot more than they bargained for. I found the story a little hard to get into at the beginning, The chapters are short and flick between the perspective of each wife so it took a bit of time to realise which wife was speaking at that time. A lot of the country American slang took a bit of time to understand too. However once I got used to the style I managed to get into the story very well. It kept me guessing until the very end and threw in a good amount of twists and deviations to make you predict incorrectly who had committed the murder. I found myself flirting between all the wives constantly never quite sure who to trust. I found the side detail really interesting as I did not know a lot about Mormon culture and this gave me quite an insight into the patriarchy and the beliefs of the religion. It led me to have a good google about some of the Mormon religion and find out more. The characters had a lot of back story and detail given about them which made it a bit more than just a thriller in my opinion. I enjoyed this book and will look out for future books by this author.
I would like to thank Netgalley and Orion books for giving me the opportunity to read this book in return for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.