All the Bad Apples

when i say it took nearly 4 hours total to go through this entire book, would you believe me? after taking 11 days to go through the previous book? motivation and a good storyteller is a wild combination. it was incredibly worth it, though!

this story follows deena, a 17 year old who's following randomly appearing letters from her presumably dead sister (who she believes is alive) and begins to unravel the tragedies that her female ancestors have experienced. the story was compelling and interesting right off the bat, and i could barely put the book down after a few chapters. the main character is immediately striking and i instantly took a liking to her, along with the other characters that follow the fmc.

the narrator is a very interesting one was well, and i absolutely loved the way this book was written. switching between perspectives, seeing how each story unravels and links with the main situation/journey, even the urgency is felt throughout the book. specific scenes at the end were described well, and i felt my body grow heavy in tune with the struggles of the fmc.

one thing to namely point out is the message that this book brings. i saw the term in the blurb of this book before i read it, yet when i read the author's note and looked up the term "magdalene's laundry", my heart immediately sank. i knew this was a woman-positive, feminist story. i wasn't surprised at the horrors behind these places, these sickly asylums that these poor women were put into just for being themselves back in the late 1700s. i was pained to read that these institutions were closed as recent as 1993. the author did a splendid job in writing these stories, where these events more likely were true when these institutions were running.

i also really loved the ever-changing banshees and the mysticism in this book. it did feel out of place now and again, yet it was something i didn't mind at all. overall, this was a really good book. i did feel like there could have been more, but that alone doesn't hurt my opinion of it.