Bradstreet Gate,Book Review

Bradstreet Gate by Robin Kirman is the story of three students and a professor at Harvard University, whose lives are thrown askew by the murder of a female undergraduate. Even as time passes, the victim’s death haunts the characters and forces their lives along on trajectories they never could have imagined.

This was a wonderful novel. The writing itself was clean. The book was well-paced and engrossing—I had difficulty putting it down. And I was enthralled the moment I began the story, having lived in the New Haven area of Connecticut, which had its own Ivy League murder (the unsolved death of Suzanne Jovin) and shares many elements with this novel.

However, the conclusion of the novel frustrated me because I had the impression that this novel was a literary mystery (its genre is listed as crime mystery), so I anticipated the loose ends of the murder would be tied up in the end. They weren’t. Had it been clear to me when I started reading the book that this was not the case, I would have been less disappointed with the ending. That said, considering the novel on its own merits without the presumptions I brought to it, I thought the story was an excellent exploration of the effects on an unsolved murder on the lives of four characters. 

I received this book from Blogging for Books in exchange for an honest review.

N.B.: This book does have some graphic adult situations.