Lady Killers: Deadly Women Throughout History

This book was recommended to me through a service I subscribe to. TBR: Tailored Book Recommendations. I quite like the service, and the thoughtful recommendations I've received so far. They're not paying me, I pay them. :)

I was recommended this book because I like true crime, but I prefer it through a feminist lens, and with a huge dose of empathy. This met those preferences.

Here, we meet several female murderers. Poison by far being their favorite method. We explore how being a woman molded their choices, played into the media narratives, made people in some cases less likely to suspect them, and in other cases quick to call them witches.

To some extent, the writing felt a bit clunky, but the author also has this really wicked and dark sense of humor that would pop up and make me laugh.

I enjoyed recapping the stories for my husband, both to keep him in line, and to amuse him. “So, there's this scroll marked confession, and the guy who finds it thinks it's just between the corpse and his God, so he chucks it into the fire. THEN he finds all this poison, and I bet he regretted chucking the scroll into the fire.”

Some of the criticisms I've seen about this book are like, “ugh too much commentary at society blah blah” which is wild to me. That's what I LIKE about true crime - the worst of humanity forces us to think about humanity. So if you like commentary and a bit of gallows humor this is for you. Perfect for Murderinos.