5 STARS!!
I absolutely loved this book! This was just the kind of weirdness I would want out a story like this. The writing was fantastic and utterly atmospheric. Schmidt captures the senses in such a way that I felt like I was in the sickly hot rooms of the Borden house watching this catastrophe unfold. FANTASTIC!

The idea behind this book was very appealing but the execution needed some work. The characters were well developed - all the characters. It was odd - I knew so much about the maid's history but not so much about Mrs. Borden. The pacing of the book was not so good. In places it really dragged and the abrupt changes in narrators didn't always work for me. At times it was almost distractive which I felt really hurt the flow of the story. I did like the author's writing. Her descriptive scenes were terrific! I had a very clear idea of the house and the characters and the town.

The premise of this book was so intriguing, I was certain I'd love it and was so chuffed when I got an ARC from Netgalley (thanks!), but my gosh, what a slog. To begin with, I loved the beautiful prose but as I got further into the book, it felt like wading through treacle. Nope. Not for me.

"And, lastly, thank you to Lizzie Borden, whoever you are. Thank you for choosing me, but it's time to go now."

I don't always read an author's acknowledgements in their entirety once I finish a book, but this time I did. What I can only assume from reading the above statement from Sarah Schmidt is that the story of Lizzie Borden and the Borden murders completely consumed her, so much so that she had no other choice but to put pen to paper. And that certainly comes across in See What I Have Done. Lizzie's character and presence is as haunting as the story is, consuming us every page, as we delve deeper and deeper into her twisted reality. Just like Schmidt felt she needed to write Lizzie's story, once we open that first page, we feel we have no choice but to keep reading.

On the morning of 4 August 1892 in Fall River, Massachusetts, Lizzie Borden calls out to the maid, Bridget, 'Someone’s killed father.’ What unfolds immediately after is a domestic nightmare, a stunning reimagining of one of the most fascinating murder mysteries of all time. The brutal axe-murder of Andrew Borden, the family patriarch, and his second wife, the hated stepmother, forces Lizzie and Emma Borden to revisit and confront the ghosts of their complicated pasts. Shifting among the perspectives of unreliable, vindictive Lizzie, her older sister Emma, their young Irish maid Bridget and the enigmatic and eerie stranger Benjamin, we are forced to watch through our fingers the events of that awful day. While most would wonder why anyone would seek to harm the wealthy and respectful Borden couple, tales from our narrators reveal a deeper and darker story of a house devoid of love; a father with an explosive temper; a spiteful stepmother; and two spinster sisters, with a bond stronger than blood, both desperate for their independence.

As the police search for clues which don't seem to exist, we learn more and more about the strange and sinister mind of Lizzie Borden, whose memory of 4 August seems shattered into fragments. We soon start to wonder if we can trust Lizzie at all, as she questions her own whereabouts on that morning: Was she in the barn or in the pear arbour escaping the heat of the house? When did she last see or speak to her stepmother?

See What I Have Done is a triumph in storytelling. It is a deeply unsettling portrait of a damaged and troubled family and a brilliant psychological examination of love, murder, self-identity and independence. The story is character-driven, with the narrative structure proving very effective in delivering a perfectly on-point pace. It also allows us to intermittently take a welcome break from being inside the mind of Lizzie, which soon proves a very troubling and unsettling place to be. The claustrophobic nature of this house and, in turn, this story is remarkable. I found it so difficult to shake the feelings of fear, dread and disgust while reading it. The starkly vivid prose and attention to detail is exceptional, particularly in the way that Schmidt focuses on the olfactory senses and on touch, taste and the mouth. Time and time again we are drawn back to the sweet and metallic smell of blood, the stickiness of it as it clings to hair and skin and skull, and how Lizzie constantly feels the need to touch its wetness or kiss the cold skin of her dead father, right "where he is cut". Description of Lizzie's tongue and how she runs it over her teeth or uses it to taste certain things, as if trying to get a fuller picture, is particularly disturbing and makes for very uncomfortable reading. Not since my first reading of Perfume by Patrick Suskind have I felt this way about a book.

Schmidt's debut is dazzling and it very much gripped me in its claws from its very first pages. Employing a unique ability to unnerve, it enthralled me in its story of a dysfunctional family and home. Despite their hateful characteristics and deceptive ways, the characters in this novel are utterly fascinating, and their unique and engaging voices make this a challenging but immensely satisfying read. I love what Schmidt has done here: this story is haunting and so very unsettling, but truly, truly wonderful. One of my favourite reads this year so far.

On an emotional level, this book is remarkable, igniting all senses. I could feel the closeness of that awful house, the closed-in smell of people and food and sickness; taste the pears and feel the stickiness on my fingers; hear Andrew and Abby slurp their soup. And the hate and fear are palpable. These are all dangerously broken people and their interactions are ominous. Showing the story from multiple points of view allows the characters to show their warped personalities and gives Schmidt a vehicle to suggest theories, to offer alternatives, to build tension and doubt. This is a mesmerizing piece of writing.

Logically it is somewhat less successful. Why did they keep eating the same pot of mutton stew? Is it what made them sick? Didn't they at least suspect it? Why was it forever on the stove? And what's up with Benjamin? He was a mixed success as a plot device. Yes, he added another option and he explained the murder weapon, but his presence felt artificial, which was especially troubling in such a vivid novel.

All in all, this is a wow.

Cracking stuff! Really well written, well researched and great imagery givi the reader a eal sense of unease - was gripped from the start. Will post proper review when I've had time to think it through better.

Remember Lizzie Borden, accused then acquitted of murdering her father and step-mother with an axe in 1892? This is a retelling of the story and it is intensely and wonderfully insane.

The writing is superb; the historical details are fascinating. Told as a multiple first person narrative, Sarah Schmidt puts us variously in the minds of Lizzie Borden, her sister, their maid and a hired thug.

The sections which are told from Lizzie's warped perspective had me blinking and refocusing on the world around me just to try to retain my own sanity.

I felt most sorry for the maid, who seemed the sanest of the lot, but trapped by her precarious position in society. It becomes clear, though, that all women in the story are captives to their gender in some way.

At first the sister is set up as the sane one against Lizzie's eccentricities, but every now and then she says something that has you frowning and wondering about her own sanity.

One of my favourite characters in the book was the house, which I know sounds daft, but Schmidt writes it in such a way that you really do feel like the house is part of the whole scene of horror. The Borden house doesn't simply creak. It pops, it has unexplained smells coming in through the roof and it locks people in with its airless heat that magnifies the stench of blood throughout the house.

I was a little unsure of the narrative in the final quarter or so. It seems to take a few strange - and possibly unnecessary - turns which feel a little disjointed in time and place.

Overall, though, this was a gripping, beautifully written story of two murders which many contemporaries believed couldn't have been committed by Lizzie Borden - simply because she was a female.

Didn't care for this. The style of writing was choppy and clunky sentences. The storyline was back and forth but not in a way that was fluid. The storyline was incomplete and left you with still too many questions. All in all I could have skipped this one.

This book is completely gripping. I felt like I was entering a apparent time of sleepiness, where everything moved slowly. Characters are introduced and the dynamics within the household are established. There are complex webs of relationships and a mentally disturbed Lizzie. The brutality of the murders shake this picture of lace curtains and religiosity. The book is gripping and gives an admirable depiction of the great unsolved mystery of Lizzie Borden and her family in the 19th century.

This is an excellent and utterly unique novel that is sure to top the book charts! The authors writing is amazing, you are bound to sucked into this novel due to the nature of the plot, and are going to be gripping the pages for hours. Have you heard of Lizzie Borden? Most have. And if that tale intrigues you than this book is a must have!

Note: My full review of this novel will be posted on all retailers including my blog, closer to release date at the request of the publisher. Thank you!

Review at goodreads

In 1892 in Massachusetts, Lizzie Borden's father and stepmother were murdered. Lizzie was arrested for the crime but was later acquitted. The book is told from several points of view so it is a fascinating way to get more than one point of view. Sarah Schmidt has taken a well known crime and re imagined it into a fast paced mystery. Thank you very much to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for an ARC in return for an honest review.

I'm floating between a two and three star rating for this book. The premise sounded interesting, and I was initially very excited to dive into this novel. In terms of overall feel and tone, the writing was descriptive and detailed. It was easy to imagine the sensory details of the surroundings- the cold mutton broth, the sickly sweet pear juice, the sickening atmosphere of the Borden household. I feel like the plot has so much potential, but the scattered quality of the plot development ultimately left me feeling like I was reading a rough draft. I never felt compelled to keep reading, and would not have been bothered had I abandoned the novel and not ever found out how it all ended. It was absent of any tension and suspense that would drive movement. On top of this, I couldn't even bring myself to care about any of the characters.

I was particularly bothered by the lack of character development in this novel. All of them seem to remain fairly static in behavior and fail to demonstrate or attain any insight into their situations. Emma is perpetually unhappy with her family, Lizzie is an oddball, Benjamin is...fairly pointless to the whole story. It felt like Schmidt scratched the surface, but failed to delve more deeply into the few parts of the plot that I found interesting. For example, Emma and Lizzie's childhood relationship to one another (Lizzie and Emma being the same 'I') seemed disturbing and dysfunctional, and I would have loved to have more information about how this relationship affected the sisters in their adult lives.

Voice bothered me, as well. Each character's voice seemed to be interchangeable with all of the others. Additionally, the voices did not seem to be consummate with the character's age or developmental level. Most noticeable to me was Lizzie's voice. Her character reads like an angsty preteen at best, but certainly does not sound like an adult woman in her thirties. Again, maybe there's something in this, but Schmidt failed to make that clear to the reader.

I was also struck by Schmidt's use of an unreliable narrator in the form of Lizzie. Whatever unreliability is established is obliterated by the fact that she offers up three other RELIABLE viewpoints. The reader doesn't have to do any guesswork and there really is no mystery to it all.

I wanted to like this book, I really truly did. It just fell short in one too many ways for me.

What a thrilling combination of crime/mystery and historical fiction!! Loved the writing and the story.

I received an ARC from NetGalley for an honest review.

For some reason, I thought this was going to be a modern interpretation of this story. Because I went into the book thinking that was what was ahead of me, I think I was disappointed.

The chapters were not only from different characters perspectives, but also jumped around a bit in time.

I was excited to read this book, but sadly, never got super invested.

Such a fun book. Juicy pears, bone and blood splatter. All the descriptions will keep you engage in this story. I never had the urge to put the book down. Even if your slightly familiar with the book you still want to know what happened, how and why. This book walks you through some very logical answers.

Reading this book as seen per person was almost as good as a fly on the wall. You can't see what happens before it happens but you just get a feeling about what may happen but, then again no you don't really know.

You wonder the severity of the crime if it was really accomplished by one person. If due to the violent strikes if it was the result of a dispute. You also wonder how noone could have heard anything? How long did it take from start to finish? How could a women have carried out such a extraordinary task times two?

Thank you to netgalley for the ARC in return for a review.

A re-imagining of a true story (one that I am aware of, but only superficially) always seems to be to be a hard sell.Speculation about the crimes still continues more than 100 years later, and is easily searchable on the internet. Yet Sarah Schmidt carries off an amazing tale that sucked me in to its claustrophobic grasp and I had to prise my way out of its clutches as I read the final words.

All is not well in the Borden house, that much is clear. Doors are kept locked, secrets kept hidden, and emotions are frowned upon. The story is told from the viewpoint of Lizzie, Emma, Bridget the maid, and Benjamin the boy who saw too much.

Bridget and Benjamin's narrative offers speculation that there is more at play and other potential suspects and that nothing is straightforward in this case.

Lizzie's voice is a tangled web of heightened emotions and wild, vicious thoughts. She is a marvellous unreliable narrator; her thoughts flit between dream and reality and her rebelling against the constrictive existence in her home, and, in part, of the time she is alive.
She is sensual and lives for pleasure, entirely selfish, she rails against anyone who stifles her pleasure seeking. She is also manipulative and knows how to make herself the centre of attention.

Lizzie is the obvious choice for murderer and Sarah Schmidt doesn't try to contradict this. Lizzie often imagines killing her father and has violent thoughts. However, there are other suspects presented in this story, and nothing is clear cut.

Emma, her sister, has a more resigned voice. She lives under the burden of her mothers dying wish to watch over Lizzie, whilst Lizzie is permitted freedoms and privileges she can only dream of. She has reason to hate her father who kept her confined to the house, having realised that time is no longer on her side, and at 42 her chance at living the life she dreamed of is gone.

The sibling rivalry between the two is summed up perfectly by Emma who recognises the game that she and Lizzie play, the eternal pushing and pulling between the pair, but knows that Lizzie will always come out on top. There is also fierce love between the sisters. Emma knows that she will always accept Lizzie without hesitation, and Lizzie is desperate for her sisters love and protection.
It was almost heartbreaking to read the relationship between the pair. Emma feels that she wished Lizzie into existence and treated her like a doll. It clearly came as a shock when Lizzie no longer behaved as Emma expected. Lizzie reacts to Emma as a hybrid mother-sister and becomes very childlike in her presence, forcing Emma into a parental role.
It is this relationship that is the real backbone of the book and became more intriguing to me than the murders.

The language and imagery throughout the book is powerful. Recurrent bird imagery reflects the sisters life. The eating of the pears hints at actions and thoughts not made explicit. The oppressive heat was almost tangible, and the smell of the mutton strew had me retching.

The phrase "See What I Have Done" could apply to any one of the characters in this book, and I think that there will be lots of different viewpoints and discussions when this book is released.

I'd never heard of Lizzie Borden before I read about this book. The topic instantly grabbed me, and I knew I had to have it. I was crossing my fingers every time I searched for it on NetGalley, and, lo and behold, it came up. And I was approved!

I love a good historical fiction, particularly one based on a true story. Lizzie Borden is famous (or infamous) for being acquitted for the murders of her father and step-mother in 1892. Told from the perspectives of Bridget the maid, a troubled young man called Benjamin, Emma the eldest daughter, and Lizzie herself, we're thrown into a whirlwind of a whodunit.

There's clearly something very strange about the Borden family. Lizzie is in her thirties, Emma in her forties, and neither of them have ever married or moved away from their childhood home. Emma, the eldest, gave up a large part of her life to care for Lizzie, when they were left motherless after their mum died. Their father married Abby a few years later, and it seems the sisters made a decision to never love their stepmother.

There are also clear signs of abuse. Andrew Borden is often violent and quick to anger, and Lizzie too has a fiery temper. Emma has escaped to her friend's house when the murders occur, and is dragged back by the tragedy. You can almost feel her desperation to cling on to her freedom. It's Emma who I identify with the most: the eldest daughter, older by a fair few years, forced to give up childhood and become a parental figure.

See What I Have Done is full of secrets, and Schmidt doesn't give them up easily. This is a triumphant debut, wonderfully written and well-researched (Schmidt stayed in the Borden house while writing this book, which is actually now a creepy hotel!). Lizzie Borden dug her claws into me and didn't let go until the very final page.

See What I Have Done is due out in May 2017, and you really don't want to miss it.

(Review will be published on 21/04 at the following link: https://dracarya.wordpress.com/2017/04/21/see-what-i-have-done-by-sarah-schmidt)

Most people are familiar with the case of Lizzie Borden. In 1892 in Fall River Massachusetts, Lizzie's father and stepmother were brutally murdered in their home with an ax. Andrew was found lying down on the couch in the sitting room, murdered while napping. Abby was found in the upstairs guest room face down on the floor. The murders shocked the whole town and Lizzie was soon under suspicion. The house was always locked from the inside and there were no signs of forced entry. The only other people in the home at the time of the murders were Lizzie and their maid Bridget. The murder weapon was suspected to be found, however it could never be 100% proven that it was the actual ax used in the killings. Lizzie was tried and acquitted of the crime, however she lived under a cloud of suspicion for the rest of her life.

The premise of this book was intriguing to me and the first half did not disappoint. I think any unsolved crime, especially one so brutal, interests people greatly. There were interesting details I had not heard before. The family was apparently very stomach sick in the days leading up to the murders. The suspected cause was mutton broth which was repeatedly reheated and thought to have spoiled. This was mentioned so much in the book it actually started to make me nauseous. The thick brown broth constantly being eaten day after day while just sitting out on the stove was so disgusting to me. I'll be happy to never hear the words mutton broth again. The family also had a visitor for a couple days during the time of the murders, although he was out of the house during the killings. Lizzie's uncle John (her mother's brother) was paying a visit and discussing business with Andrew.

The book was told from alternating viewpoints. Each chapter was told from the perspective of Lizzie, Bridget, Emma (Lizzie's sister), and Benjamin (Uncle John's friend). Towards the second half of the book I started to get tired of the atmosphere. The whole book takes place within 3 days. Bridget is so miserable and wants to go back to her home in Ireland so badly, it was very depressing to read her chapters. The constant talk of stagnant air, reheated mutton broth, such close quarters, hot breath, stomach sickness, I could go on and on. It turned very dark and depressing for me and made me not want to revisit the story. The trial wasn't covered at all and the ending was a little unresolved much like the murders themselves.

Boy, I struggled with this one. At first I thought it was because I am not very used to Historical Fiction and the little I read the prose was not quite so lyrical and random, so I took it as a challenge to read something different and try to enjoy it. However, the more I read the less invested I felt.

I have read quite a lot of books where the narrative jumps back and forth and if done well it adds a new dimension to the story and I feel very involved in it, wanting to know what happened both back then and present day. But here it was just confusing. There are a lot of flashbacks in the middle of chapters so even when they were dated I never knew what was going on or when. One minute a character is having a pretty straight thought, then she thinks of something else and there's paragraphs and paragraphs of that and by the time that was done I had to really make an effort to remember what she was doing before and catch the thread of the narrative again.

The prose could be absolutely enthralling. Some descriptions were extremely vivid, reaching out to all our five senses and making me feel like I was there. On a couple of occasions where things got pretty gross I was actually sick to my stomach. But good writing is just not enough when nothing much seems to happen and it gets really tiring after a while. Sure, the characters were peculiar and the writing was very good, but after a while that is just not enough.

To this day I don't get why people kept eating a stew that was obviously spoiled. It felt like they had it for days but then again maybe it was just that one day.

And the worst part is I could not even get closure. The more the book approached the end the more enigmatic and riddled with innuendo the prose got. (view spoiler)

I was extremely disappointed at See What I Have Done. I do think others will enjoy it if they are okay with this prose and not getting closure at the end of the book. It's one of those I classify under read it for the journey, not the destination, although I am sure even the ending will please folks who love lyrical writing.

Disclaimer: I would like to thank the publisher and Netgalley for providing me a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.