Blog Tour: Dangerous Women – Hope Adams
Yes, this is the week of too many blog tours. But all of them are for awesome books! Today, it’s my turn to talk about Dangerous Women by Hope Adams. This is a fun historical mystery set aboard a ship going from the UK to Australia in the nineteenth century. It is focused on characters, and based on a real journey and the quilt that was produced during the voyage. You can see the quilt here – I can’t stop staring at it! And can I just mention how gorgeous the cover for Dangerous Women is? I love it.
Thanks to Michael Joseph Books and Gaby Young for having me on the tour and sending me an eARC. All opinions are my own.
STAR RATING: 4/5 ✶
RELEASE DATE: 04/03/21
SUMMARY: London, 1841. The Rajah sails for Australia. On board are 180 women convicted of petty crimes, sentenced to start a new life half way across the world. Daughters, sisters, mothers – they’ll never see home or family again. Despised and damned, all they have now is each other. Until the murder. As the fearful hunt for a killer begins, everyone on board is a suspect. The investigation risks tearing their friendships apart. . . But if the killer isn’t found, could it cost them their last chance of freedom? (from Penguin Michael Joseph)
OPINIONS: I’ve been on a bit of a historical kick lately, and I really enjoyed Dangerous Women. It is a fun escapist story, with the added quality of being based in a real historical moment. While the characters and story are fictional, the ship, the Rajah, existed, and was used to transport prisoners from the UK to Australia in 1841. The quilt the woman produce over the course of the journey exists and is absolutely stunning, giving the story an added dimension.
I found this to be well-written and full of interesting characters. It really is a character-driven story, and not very fast paced. I feel like it could have been condensed a bit, but not massively so. What irritated me a bit while reading – and this is likely due to reading an eARC and generally being terrible at noticing chapter headers – is that it switches around on the timeline quite often, but because it’s all on the ship it isn’t always obvious from context. This got me a bit muddled up for a while, but I think that’s more of a me problem than anything else.
The resolution of the story is very satisfying and it never felt very obvious how the story might turn out. The ARC I read was at times a bit more superficial than I would have preferred, but overall it did not detract from my enjoyment. It is not a perfect book, but if you like historical fiction or novels such as The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton, you might like this one too. Add Dangerous Women to Goodreads here, and order a copy from Bookshop here (affiliate link).