I just went on a ten-day vacation to New York City, Boston/Salem and Montreal, and I managed to read FOUR books during my vacation (I spent a lot of time on planes and a train):

Sadie by Courtney Summers

Courtney Summers takes the popular true crime podcast and turns it into a novel in the compelling and utterly sad Sadie. The novel is about the murder of a thirteen-year-old girl, Mattie, and the subsequent disappearance of her nineteen-year-old sister, Sadie. The novel is split between first person narration as Sadie attempts to track down Mattie’s killer and get revenge, and the podcast investigation into Mattie’s murder and Sadie’s disappearance. Sadie explores difficult subjects such as pedophilia, sexual abuse, and assault. It also examines why podcasters take it upon themselves to investigate crimes that the police seem to be either unable to solve or indifferent to solving. I think Sadie is an interesting novel, and I cannot stop thinking of the ending, which is ambiguous and bleak AF. If you enjoy thrillers, I think you will like this novel.

In My Dreams I Hold a Knife by Ashley Winstead

In My Dreams I Hold a Knife is another thriller about an unsolved murder, but it is not as interesting as Sadie. The novel jumps back and forth between two different timelines: the present, when the novel’s 30-year-old protagonist, Jessica, is attending her ten-year college reunion; and ten years in the past, when Jessica is a senior at college and her close friend, Heather, is brutally stabbed to death. At the reunion, Heather’s brother confronts Jessica and her group of friends, determined to finally figure out who killed his sister. In My Dreams I Hold a Knife is full of clichéd characters and situations, and the killer, when they are finally revealed, is not really a surprise. The most interesting aspect of the novel is Jessica, who is a selfish narcissist. The story is mostly told from her perspective, but she is an unreliable narrator and hides things from the reader. She undergoes a transformation throughout the novel, but then one last twist at the end has you feeling conflicted for empathizing with her.

Metropolitan Stories by Christine Coulson

I purchased Metropolitan Stories at the giftshop in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Christine Coulson used to work at the Met for twenty-five years before she left to become a writer. Metropolitan Stories is not really a novel, it is more like a series of short stories interconnected by certain recurring characters. The book is set completely within the Met and therefore the Met becomes a microcosm for the world. There are elements of the fantastical in each of the stories: subjects that can leave their works of art, ghosts, disappearing people and portals to other places and times. Sounds interesting, but I found Metropolitan Stories to be a boring read.

The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne

I toured the actual House of the Seven Gables when I was in Salem, and I had no idea that it was the inspiration for Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel or that he had even written a novel called The House of the Seven Gables. The only Nathaniel Hawthorne novel I knew was The Scarlet Letter, which I read a million years ago in high school. The tour guide talked up The House of the Seven Gables so well that I had to purchase it from the giftshop afterwards. Hawthorne himself described The House of the Seven Gables as a “gothic romance”. The novel is about a curse placed on the Pyncheon family after General Pyncheon used the hysteria over the Salem witch trials to accuse Matthew Maule of witchcraft so that Maule would be hanged and General Pyncheon could get his hands on Maule’s property. General Pyncheon builds the House of the Seven Gables on top of the foundations of Maule’s home, and on the night that he hosts a party in his new home, General Pyncheon is found dead in his study. The novel then picks up a couple hundred years later when General Pyncheon’s descendants still living in the House of the Seven Gables are destitute. The gothic elements in the novel come from the foreboding and rundown House of the Seven Gables, haunted by Pyncheons who met their untimely ends there. There is not a lot of plot to The House of the Seven Gables, but the characters are well developed (since Hawthorne spends so much time describing the characters and their actions), except the male half of the romantic couple in the novel. The romance is definitely the weakest link and felt rushed. If you like 19th century fiction, then you might find The House of the Seven Gables to be worth reading.