SuitabookDeadly Little Scandals
Jennifer Lynn Barnes
- Reading
- Because this is the second book in a duology and includes many earlier family revelations, read the first book beforehand if possible. Pause to map relationships and distinguish confirmed facts from rumours as the mystery develops.
- Themes
- Privilege, gender and resistance: Characters discuss money’s limits, racialised exclusion and rules imposed on girls that their brothers do not share; the story also foregrounds sisterhood and female friendship. The book gives these issues a direct place in character dialogue and connects collective action with women making history.
- Family identity and secrecy: Sawyer investigates her origins amid concealed parentage, adoption, betrayal and a web of relationships involving several generations. Secrets drive the mystery, while the characters’ loyalties and identities are repeatedly unsettled rather than presented as simple.
- Mystery, danger and truth-seeking: Sawyer joins the White Gloves and investigates a disappearance after a disturbing discovery near the family’s summer home, amid blackmail and treachery. Investigation is presented as compelling but exposes characters to danger and uncertain loyalties.
- Worth knowing
- Be ready for references to human remains, a possible long-ago death, disappearance, blackmail, dangerous investigations, drugging and possible kidnapping. The book also includes discussion of racism and unequal rules for girls and boys.