1918 New York and the city is struggling with the spread of the Spanish Influenza epidemic as well as WWI.
3 friends Birdie, Alene and Jasper are reunited at an engagement party only the party doesn't end how they expected when someone drops dead from poisoning.
This is a story about the friendship as well as a murder mystery, wonderfully full of twists and turns.
Just when you think you have it solved it changes. There are also many intriguing subplots that make you question if you have worked it out or not!
The details of Spanish flu which was a devastating, worldwide epidemic that killed .millions of people are really well written and you can tell that a lot of research has been put into this book. I also found it to be cleverly educational, I learned things about chemistry, clocks, poison, as well as the influenza.
I managed to plough through the book in just one sitting as it is so well written the pages soon fly by but I only guessed one of the "puzzles" and was totally surprised at the end, the twist was impossible to guess!
Wonderful book and i can't wait to read more from Lydia Kang ( )

Underlying is an interesting eeryness

Characters inter-relate and cause you to form opinions and to choose favorites. But, in the end a lot of the elements you used to rate their value (wealth, social awareness, hard work, resilience, beauty, intellect, and loyalty) and choose who was to your liking and who was not - are twisted and turned into an ending that turns from the macabre and delivers a few glimmers of hope. ( )

Underlying is an interesting eeryness

Characters inter-relate and cause you to form opinions and to choose favorites. But, in the end a lot of the elements you used to rate their value (wealth, social awareness, hard work, resilience, beauty, intellect, and loyalty) and choose who was to your liking and who was not - are twisted and turned into an ending that turns from the macabre and delivers a few glimmers of hope. ( )

During 1918, World War I is still waging and the Spanish flu hits. Allene Cutter (18) is engaged to Andrew Biddle (18), both from very wealthy New York City families. The book begins with their engagement party where two friends Allene has not seen in four years are in attendance, Birdie Dreyer (now 18, a former companion, and a radium watch face painter) and Jason Jones (18 and a childhood friend whose family met very hard times and society shunned him). During the party Florence Waxworth (a tedious busybody and mean gossip) falls down the stairs. Her death is ruled accidental at the urging of Allene's father, but Allene, Birdie, and Jason think it may have been murder. Jason is a janitor at the Bellevue Hospital which serves as the city morgue, but wants to be a doctor. He brings their suspicions to the attention of the city morgue head and due to his inquiries is hired as an assistant. The three friends embark on an investigation. Other characters include Ernie Fielding (also 18, a banker, and always around), Lucy (Allene's maid), Dorothy Cutter (Allene's absent mother), Mr. Cutter (Allene's father), Fred Jones ( Jasper's alcoholic uncle), Hazel Dreyer (Birdie's mother) and Holly Dreyer (4 year old child). ( )

It's the engagement party of wealthy Manhattan socialite Allene, a frothy distraction from the news of the slaughter in the trenches of Europe and the ever-rising number of influenza cases in the city—but then one of Allene's guests is poisoned. She is just the first to die, and Allene and her slightly-estranged childhood friends, Birdie and Jasper, team up to unmask the killer.

This is an enjoyable and unusually ambitious example of the historical murder mystery genre. Lydia Kang doesn't overlook how social class, gender, and money shape the lives of her characters; Allene, Birdie, and Jasper are all believably flawed and have individual blind spots that are believable for people born in fin de siècle New York. The first couple of chapters made me think that this would be a vaguely polyamorous Nancy Drew-ish kind of read, but Kang is trying to do something more complex here. It doesn't always work. Some of the perspective shifts are a little clumsy and red herrings too obviously sign-posted. The whodunnit reveal was also underwhelming. While the logistics of it worked, I have a suspicion that a re-read wouldn't show Kang to have been playing fair with the misdirects/the psychology of it, and some of the motivations aren't entirely believable.

Still, a fun read for lying on the couch in arm's reach of the Christmas tub of Cadbury's Roses, and I'd definitely check out subsequent books by this author. ( )