The White City by Grace Hitchcock Book Review

The White City by Grace Hitchcock
From back cover:
While attending the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, Winnifred Wylde believes she witnessed a woman being kidnapped. She tries to convince her father, an inspector with the Chicago police, to look into reports of mysterious disappearances around the White City. Inspector Wylde tries to dismiss her claims as exaggeration of an overactive imagination, but he eventually concedes to letting her go undercover as secretary to the man in question—if she takes her pistol for protection and Jude Thorpe, a policeman, for bodyguard.

Will she be able to expose H. H. Holmes’s illicit activity, or will Winnifred become his next victim?

I listen to a lot of true crime podcasts and watch a lot of true crime shows, so I was super interested in this book when I came across it. If you know anything about true crime, you've probably heard the stories about H.H. Holmes and his murder castle.

I found this book to be interesting. I appreciated the fact that the author kept true to the actual facts surrounding H.H. Holmes as there is a lot of sensationalized information surrounding him. I thought the author did a great job of weaving a fictional tale in with actual facts. 

I thought the story rang true to what was known of Holmes at the time. I've seen other reviewers complaining that there wasn't enough murder/emphasis on the serial killer part of Holmes, but if you actually think about it, the general public really didn't know about Holmes's murders until after he was arrested. There were a few people who possibly knew but didn't say anything. And of course there was the disappearances and rumors of murder that were connected to him, but as far as his murdering, it wasn't really confirmed until after he was arrested.  

Simply put, Holmes was a con artist as he committed a lot of insurance fraud, so I liked that the story touched on that. 

I did find the romance to be a bit cheesy at times. Especially a good portion of the middle of the book where the plot dragged a bit. The characters were interesting enough to keep me engaged, even if I did roll my eyes a bit at the romance and move on.

And there really wasn't as much suspense as I would have hoped. I've read some other reviews where people said this book leaned more towards romance than suspense, and I would agree with that. 

So yes, personally I would have preferred more suspense and action, but considering this book is for a Christian market I think it's pretty good. I've read enough book reviews to see that some Christians will lose their minds over every little thing, so had this book included more murder, I don't know that it would have been as well received.

Overall I found this book to be well written with good characters and an interesting plot. I will be looking forward to reading the next book in the series!

I received a complimentary copy of this book from Barbour Publishers through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Five for Friday

Hello and welcome to my Five for Friday! I am Linking up with Bright on a Budget, Della Devoted, BYBMG and Andrea!

1. Last weekend we attended the EU Open House! It's an event where 28 EU member countries open their embassies to the public to share their culture. It was really interesting and we were glad to go! We arrived at 12 and stayed until it closed at 4 and we were only able to visit 5 Embassies. 

We were surprised at how many people were there! We had to wait in really long lines for most of them. Travel brochures, food, and dancing was to be found at most of the embassies. 

Overall we had a fun time and hope to go back next year! There were several other embassies we wanted to visit (like France and Germany) but they were in a different part of town and we heard the lines were super long. But now that we have gone once we know what to expect for next year!

My EU passport and brochure | The Portuguese embassy

 The Luxembourg Embassy

 Inside the Luxembourg embassy

 The Irish embassy | The Croatian embassy

 Inside the Croatian embassy | The Latvian embassy

Inside the Latvian embassy

2. Since we were gone all day Saturday, Mother's day was pretty simple. My sister and I had presents for my mom, and then my mom wanted to go see a movie. She wanted to go see Captain Marvel again (my sister has turned my mom into a Marvel fan now!) so we did that. Then we just came home and I fixed dinner and my mom and I got caught up on Dateline and American Idol. So overall not too eventful but a nice day nonetheless! 

3. I was at Wegman's earlier this week and found this pretty bouquet for only $4! Wegman's flowers are usually kind of pricey, so I was really surprised to find these for so cheap!

4. What are your favorite summer clothes? I really need to buy some new clothes for summertime and I am kind of stumped for what to get. I'm leaning toward just wearing dresses all summer because they're easier, but it's hard to know what to wear when it's really hot and humid! 

5. In case you missed it, on Monday I shared a post about my Recent Beauty Purchases!

Hope you have a great weekend!

Recent Beauty Purchases 5

Caudalie Miceller Water: I really like this miceller water! Caudalie is my favorite skincare brand, mostly because I've always had good luck with their products. But this works great on my skin and is very gentle yet is able to remove waterproof mascara fairly easily. If you read through the comments on Sephora's website some people say it leaves a soapy residue, but I have never had that issue.

L'Oreal Nude Intense Eye Shadow Palette: I was a bit disappointed in this palette. The colors are a bit more brown in real life than they appear in the image. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's just not quite what I was expecting. The colors are pretty pigmented and blend well, but sometimes they will crease and other times they won't. I was able to find this palette on clearance at Target, plus I used a coupon so I bought it for like $7. I am okay with that price, but I would have been annoyed if I had paid full price for it.

L'Oreal Total Coverage Foundation in Classic Ivory: I don't wear foundation very often, and I was using the Pro Matte version before I bought this one, so I am going to kind of compare the two.

The formula of the Total Coverage is very thick. Whereas the Pro Matte is very runny. The Total Coverage doesn't stain my makeup sponge like the Pro Matte does. The Pro Matte just would not come out. 

Color wise I think the Total Coverage is a little lighter in color than the Pro Matte one, even though they both are in the shade Classic Ivory.

While it is labeled as Total Coverage, as in full coverage, it can be applied lighter. I don't like to go heavy handed with the foundation, but you could easily layer it for more coverage if you need to. 

I have large pores and the Total Coverage seems to settle into my pores instead of smoothing/evening them out. Even with the L'Oreal Magic Perfecting Base (which I'll discuss below) it only helps somewhat.

Between the two, I like the Total Coverage better than the Pro Matte, with the exception of the pore issue, which for me is the only negative to the Total Coverage.

L'Oreal Paris Infallible Lip 2 Step: I was really impressed with this lip stain! I happened across it in a clearance basket at Target for only $2.98, and figured I would give it a try. I'm glad I bought it! I have had trouble with most every lip stains I've tried. Usually they'll start flaking off or transferring after wearing for a few hours, but I had this on all day long and it still looked great at the end of the day! And that's after eating, drinking lots of water and even eating an ice cream cone! 

After several wears I've noticed that the color will start to come off if you don't keep up with the moisturizer. If you let your lips get dry it will start to come off, the moisturizer helps to keep the color in place.

For some reason Target shows it's out of stock online but I have seen it in store.

L'Oreal Magic Perfecting Base: I had heard a lot of good about this product, so I was interested in giving it a try. As I mentioned earlier, I have large pores so if I can find something decent to help reduce the appearance of them I'll try it.

I thought this worked pretty well. I can't decide if I like the Maybelline Baby Skin Instant Pore Eraser better or not. They really seemed to both work about the same, with maybe a slight advantage to the L'Oreal product. I really couldn't give you a great reason why I like the L'Oreal Base better, I just do. I will say that the Maybelline Pore Erase has a rather unpleasant smell to it.

With the L'Oreal Perfecting Base you can see the difference just after applying the base, but with the Maybelline Pore Eraser you don't see any difference until after you apply your foundation. So overall if I had to pick one or the other I would probably just go with the L'Oreal one.

Have you tried any new beauty products lately?

Five for Friday

Hello and welcome to my Five for Friday! I am linking up with Bright on a Budget, Della Devoted, BYBMG and Andrea!

1. Last Friday my mom and I went strawberry picking! It's been years since we've done that, so it was nice to be able to go. We were planning on having to be out there for several hours picking, but there were just so many berries we ended up picking 4 gallons in 40 minutes!

2. Unfortunately for us, the strawberries have zero flavor. Which is super disappointing because we like to just eat strawberries by themselves. So we decided to make some jam with the berries. Again, it's been years since my mom has made jam so it was nice to be able to do that! 

In addition to the jam, I also made chocolate dipped strawberries, strawberry syrup (which I added to some homemade lemonade and it was really good!), strawberry shortcake, strawberry spinach salad, and I also froze some strawberries to use in smoothies.

So, despite the lack of flavor we were able to use them all up for other things!

3. My mom and I went to Costco earlier this week and while we were looking at the books I found this cute kids book.

There were several other books in this collection, such as Alice in Wonderland, The Secret Garden, and The Jungle Book. 

I just thought the illustrations were super cute!

4. We are supposed to go to DC this weekend to hang out with my brother and do something for Mother's Day, but it's supposed to rain so I'm not sure what we will end up doing. 

Are you doing anything for Mother's Day?

5. In case you missed it, on Monday I shared my April Photo A Day pictures!

Hope you have a great weekend!

My April 2019 Photo A Day Pictures

I found the April prompts to not be as fun (despite the fact the first prompt is actually the word fun!). This was the first time where I regularly struggled with coming up with a picture for each prompt. Despite that, I did come up with a photo each day. Even if this isn't my favorite month of pictures. 

So here are my April photo a day pictures:

(source)

My March Photo A Day Pictures

My February Photo A Day Pictures

My January Photo A Day Pictures