“Sarah Schmidt’s debut novel is a terrifically dread-inducing, claustrophobic, nightmarish immersion in a fictional version of one of the most famous crimes in American history … Schmidt turns those facts about the case into a tense psychological study of family dysfunction, painted with a vividness bordering on the hallucinogenic. The reader is drawn into a house that feels as if it is slowly strangling its inhabitants … Schmidt skillfully manages the challenge of writing about a historical murder case by introducing elements that make us doubt what we think we know … I don’t know whether many authors invite such haunting by their characters, but in Schmidt’s case it led to a gripping and accomplished novel. Readers of See What I Have Done may feel haunted by Lizzie Borden, too.”
–Colette Bancroft, The Tampa Bay Times, August 2, 2017
Read more of Colette’s reviews here
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