I saw the author talking about her book on Instagram and was immediately intrigued. She spoke of a story about a mysterious death on an Artic expedition trip in the 1800s and the tours of public hangings that used to take place in England. It sounded so fascinating! Unfortunately, “Maude Horton’s Glorious Revenge” just didn’t live up to my expectations.

This book reminded me of a blend of “The Terror” by Dan Simmons and “Things in Jars” by Jess Kidd. It had the characters on a ship with the atmosphere of the haunting Artic chill, as well as the historical setting of “Jars.” However, both of those books held my interest throughout, and this one just fell flat. It wasn’t even very long, but I felt like I was reading the same plot points over and over. There wasn’t really a whole lot of mystery as promised either, because the reader ends up knowing who caused the death fairly early on. And then Maude’s actual revenge plot doesn’t occur until pretty much the end of the novel. I was missing some of that panache and flair that’s necessary to pull off this type of story. I also felt like details were withheld and then provided later on in a frustrating way. Instead of providing suspense, this writing style just felt annoying.

I was most intrigued by the tours of public hangings that were an actual thing that people did back then. But this turned out to be a rather small aspect of the overall novel. I would have loved if the story revolved way more around these macabre spectacles. Overall, this book was far from ‘glorious.’

2 stars

*Free copy provided by Simon & Schuster in exchange for an honest review*