Book Review: Dangerous Women by Hope Adams

Happy Monday bookish people! I hope you’re all having a good day today. I am bringing you the book review for Dangerous Women by Hope Adams.

In this book review I will give star ratings to four categories and I will write a little bit about each one. I will try to keep it as spoiler free as possible. I hope you enjoy my book review.

Dangerous Women Plot

In this book the reader is transported into the world of a Women’s convict ship on it’s many weeks travelling across the sea to Australia for a new life. Then one of the women gets murdered. Not only is this book highly atmospheric, it has layers of tension, imagery and mystery and it is one of my favourite books of 2022 so far. I have recently been loving the historical mysteries and this novel fits in that genre perfectly. There’s not a lot I can say about this plot without spoiling anything because it is full of twists but I can say that if you like mystery books I would definitely recommend this book to you.

Dangerous Women Characters

In this book you are mainly focused on the women as the main characters, and there are quite a few of them with their own important link to the plot, you also see the captain often. By following these characters I got very attached to a few of them, in particular the group of ladies who are part of the sewing group. This book, although it has a strong plot, is very character driven which I think works very well.

Dangerous Women Writing and Dialogue

This book is told from multiple perspectives which adds a very interesting layer to the mystery because you as the reader are learning things that the other characters might not know. I’m not usually the biggest fan of multiple perspectives but for this book it works.

Dangerous Women Overall

I gave this book four stars overall because it was a fast-paced, high stakes historical mystery and I enjoyed it.

Blurb/Synopsis:

Nearly two hundred condemned women on board a sailing ship bound for Australia. One of them is a murderer. From debut author Hope Adams comes a thrilling novel based on the 1841 voyage of the convict ship Rajah, about confinement, hope, and the terrible things we do to survive.

London, 1841. One hundred eighty Englishwomen file aboard the Rajah, embarking on a three-month voyage to the other side of the world.

They’re daughters, sisters, mothers–and convicts.

Transported for petty crimes.

Except one of them has a deadly secret, and will do anything to flee justice.

As the Rajah sails farther from land, the women forge a tenuous kinship. Until, in the middle of the cold and unforgiving sea, a young mother is mortally wounded, and the hunt is on for the assailant before he or she strikes again.

Each woman called in for question has something to fear: Will she be attacked next? Will she be believed? Because far from land, there is nowhere to flee, and how can you prove innocence when you’ve already been found guilty?

That’s it for this book review, I hope you all enjoyed it!