Maude Horton’s Glorious Revenge by Lizzie Pook

 

Title: Maude Horton’s Glorious Revenge

Author:  Lizzie Pook

Narrated by:  Genevieve Gaunt

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio

Length: Approximately 9 hours and 31 minutes 

Source: Review Copy from Simon & Schuster Audio.  Thank you @simonandschuster @BookClubFavorites #BookClubFavorites for the free books!

Do you have any favorite stories, books, or movies that focus on revenge?  Whenever I think about revenge, I think about The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas and the excellent movie.

The first chapter of Maude Horton’s Glorious Revenge starts with the execution, and it says it’s starting at the end of the story.  Who is being executed?  I thought this was a very engaging introduction.

Maud’s sister, Constance, dressed a s a boy and left Victorian London on a ship that was going to the Artic to rescue another ship.  She does not return alive, and her sister Maude wants answers.  

My thoughts on this book:

• The book alternates between Maude, her sister Constance’s diary, and Edison, a man that Maude suspects murdered her sister.

• London is swept up in a “murder mania.”  Edison has started tours to bring people on trips to public executions.  Maude joins these tours to investigate him.

• The public executions were very morbid, and Edison is very creepy.

• Although the executions haunted me, I was even more haunted by the sad story of the death of a baby artic fox and its mother.  It illustrated how Edison did not have any empathy.  Animals were not treated kindly during the Victorian age.

• Questions kept me going through the book such as will Maud get her revenge?  How did her sister die?  Who was her sister’s great love?  Will Ellison get his comeuppance?

• This book had a great twist at the end.  

• Maude and Constance were both great characters and extraordinarily strong women.  They were well developed, and I was fully engaged in their stories.

• I liked this unique plot.

• Genevieve Gaunt was a great narrator and I enjoyed listening to this audiobook.

• I really need to read Lizzie Pook’s other novel, Moonlight and the Pearler’s Daughter.

Overall, Maude Horton’s Glorious Revenge is a great gothic Victorian historical fiction suspense novel with great characters and a unique plot.