I admired the loyalty Josephine had for her father in spite of his misdeeds. I loved the forgiveness that was portrayed in the story and enjoyed reading about the faith of Josephine and Braham. There is an HEA for the main characters. I found the facts that the story was based on quite interesting. The author writes without any graphic details of the grave robbing. I received a copy from NetGalley. I chose to write a review and share my opinion.

I confess, although I had heard the term “grave robbers” I did not realize it was an actual practice that took place sometime in our history. What an interesting book The Yellow Lantern is and is book One in this true crime series.        This historical mystery revolves around the practice of body snatching, stealing recently dead bodies after burial for medical research. This was strictly forbidden and also illegal, and if the culprits were caught they faced severe penalties. Josephine was thought to be dead although she was barely alive, when the grave snatcher brought her to the doctor for research. The Doctor realizing she was alive was going to kill her to cover up his mistake. She pled for her life and he allowed her to live if she would help him in letting him know when someone was close to death so they could be ready to snatch the body as soon as it was buried. …..Thus begins this most interesting tale Dicken has written about a horrid practice in an era bygone. The history in this book is well researched.  It is interesting to learn about grave robbing and body snatching. The plot is an interesting one and centers on Jessie fighting against her conscience and religious scruples in trying to help the body snatchers.  She is doing this to save her beloved father from debtors prison…….I received a complimentary copy of this book from Barbour Publishing and was under no obligation to post a review.

Wow! When Josephine awakens, she is positioned as the next corpse for research.  Her body snatched from the graveyard, only she hadn't died! Josephine makes it her challenge to stop the Doctor and those he employs. Based on true stories it certainly gives a person some history to ponder! I was gifted a copy through the publisher and NetGalley, no review was required. My review is voluntary...

Can you Imagine waking up on an operating table being thought dead?  well that happens to Josie. She manages to avoid being disected and lives. She has to find a body to replace herself. She moves to another town and gets a job in a mill. She becomes attracted to the mill foreman, Braham. Trying to keep her secret, she tries to avoid any attachments. This book discusses the hazards of mill work and the illegal body snatching for experiments. This historical is filled with interesting and complex characters. I could not put this book down!

The Yellow Lantern is a Gothic crime suspense.  What a great plot!  This book will keep you on the edge of your seat.  I am really enjoying this series of crime books based on true happenings.  I highly recommend this book.

This is another story in the True Colors series. Fictionalized accounts of true crime. So far, this series has been very interesting going back in history to tell us how these crimes came about. This one is set in late 1800's in MA depicting a grave robbing ring that studies the bodies for medical reasons. Very macabre and disturbing. This mostly revolves around a cotton mill and the girls that work there. All kinds of accidents happen so there are quite a few victims. All in all, a good read.
I received a free copy of this book from Netgalley and the publisher and voluntarily chose to review it.

I received a free digital copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I am a fan of historical fiction in general. I'm not sure that this book will end up in my top ten list.

The story deals with grave robbers, fabric mills, cotton farms and the troubles that come with owing money to the wrong people.

The main character, Josephine, finds herself needing to help with grave robbing to get her father out of trouble. Part of my less than 5-star review is because her problem felt fuzzy to me. It appears that she owed bodies to a doctor she had been working with, but I'm not sure why. She was also supposed to pay off someone else to get her father out of trouble, but that was also not super clear. He had been in a debtors prison and was released, but was now supposed to be sent back? Her situation was desperate enough that she felt the need to associate with grave robbers, but I'm not sure it was clear enough to me that I could understand why she would do such a thing and why there were no other options.

At any rate, she moves to another town to work in a cotton mill. She is to be on the lookout for deaths and then assist with the body stealing. At the mill, she makes friends and enemies, as expected. I wish it wasn't so easy to tell the "good guys" from the "bad guys" as it makes the story a whole lot more fun to read.

This book took me back to 1824 when medical science was archaic and grave robbing was popular. As I started this book I had a chill going up my spine. I had no idea grave robbing was a real thing let alone it was something that was done for research. I felt like I was reading a Gothic romantic mystery.
Ms. Dicken writes a mystery like Agatha Christie. I was on pins and needles the entire time. I kept turning pages late into the night attempting to figure out the mystery.
Josie and Braham were a great hero and heroine and the cast of characters that Ms. Dicken placed around them at the cotton mill complimented them and the story. Liesel the little bobbin girl is adorable and I could just see her running around the mill when called.
I loved watching Josie use herbs in caring for the girls at the mill. She'd learned about herbs at her mother's knee so it was enjoyable to watch her come into her own as a healer.
Overall this is book is exciting, suspenseful, romantic, and has everything that I love in a historical romantic mystery. I learned about cotton mills, grave robbing, and the beginning of our medical sciences.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book via the publisher in association with Angie Dicken's street team. I was not required to write a review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This was such a farfetched story that I found it hard to get through. But as the author explained in her note body snatchers did in fact exist in the 1800's. This story is a very tangled web of murder and deceit. This book was interesting but not really enjoyable.

Grave Robbers, Cotton Mills, and a Dawning Romance

In 1824, Jessie Clayton is gravely ill, but she doesn’t want to die. Dr. Chadwick is there, a doctor she’s been assisting for some time. He shakes his head there’s nothing he can do, but then Jessie wakes up on an operating table. She’s the next corpse Dr. Chadwick plans to dissect for his research. Shocked that she’s alive, he wants to kill her to cover his crime of body snatching. Everyone already thinks she’s dead anyway, but Jessie pleads with him, and she’s spared. The deal is that she will become Jessie Clay and go to work at a cotton mill. She will also scout fresh bodies for the body snatchers by pretending to be a mourner. 

Accidents are rife at the mill, and Jessie becomes well known for her healing remedies.. The manager, Braham Taylor, notices her for her healing gifts. They become friends and romantic feelings develop between them. It is because of Braham that she will face her greatest test and decide her own fate.

This historical mystery revolves around the practice of body snatching, stealing recently dead bodies for medical research. It was strictly illegal, and if the snatchers were caught they faced severe penalties. The cotton mills were another factor in life in Massachusetts and other states. The conditions were dangerous and the workers were mostly young women, factory girls. 

The history in this book is well researched. Although it’s hard to read about, it’s interesting to learn more about body snatching. The plot draws you in centering on Jessie’s religious scruples and her need to continue to help the body snatchers to save her father from debtors prison. 

The characters are likable. You can feel Jessie’s conflict about the role she’s playing. The budding romance between Jessie and Braham is sensitively written. There is no promiscuous sex, so it’s suitable for young readers. 

I received this book from Barbour Publishing for this review.

The Yellow Lantern is set in the Northeast in the early 1800s. Against her will, Josephine Clayton was drug into a network of body snatchers by her father and his farmhand. She was made to believe that her participation was the only way to protect her father, the only parent she had left. As part of her role, Josephine became Josie Clay and was hired on at the Gloughton Mill, a place where accidents often happened and could lead to death. No one could have predicted her growing attachment to the mill's manager, Braham Taylor, and his foster aunt, Mrytle Bates. Josie was torn between her loyalty to her father, her loyalty to God, and her growing affection for Braham and Aunt Myrtle. While she herself an herbalist was involved in the healing arts, using stolen bodies for medical research was repugnant to her. A way out of her predicament was elusive. 

It took me awhile to get into this story, but once I did, I was hooked. I recommend the book with its unique story line and well-written dialogue to fans of suspense and historical fiction. I am grateful to Barbour Publishing for providing me with a copy of The Yellow Lantern via NetGalley in exchange for my honest opinion. I was under no obligation to provide a positive review and received no monetary compensation.

What happens when a person who loves to heal through medicinal herbs is asked to use one of her remedies to kill someone? Josie Clayton finds herself in this position as she tries to pay off her father's debt. I enjoyed the love story as well as the portrayal of the villains in this historical crime drama. I haven't read the other books in the series but look forward to them.

I had a hard time getting into this book.  I've loved the other books in the series, but they are all written by different people.  I felt like the pace of this story was a little slow, and the writing a little clunky at times.  It was like the sentence structure was a little odd.  I would find myself reading a sentence and get to the end only to be confused and have to reread it - sometimes because of pronouns or sometimes word choices that didn't seem to fit.  Sadly, I also had a bit of a hard time liking the main character, Josie.  She spent much of the book bemoaning her circumstances and feeling worried and guilty about things that hadn't happened yet, and that were in her control to change... Instead of focusing on a way to extract herself from having to achieve a good end by terrible means, she just kept viewing herself as a terrible person.  The characters also seemed to make lots of leaps from brooding to giddy-flirty very easily.  It made their moods seem a bit drastic and unrealistic.  Josie told Braham they couldn't even be friends, but instead of distancing herself, or even attempting to, she's immediately eating dinner at his home again with no discussion of any internal struggle about it.  
Most of the action of the plot takes place in the last 25% of the book.  Overall it's a good story, but I feel like the character development and the writing needed a little more work.  It feels a little more like a draft than a polished novel.

I love true crime and medical crime. It blows me away the things people used to do before we enforced some morality. I really enjoyed this book and look forward to reading more from this author.

Sometimes characters in stories and people in real life get caught in situations beyond their control.That is the situation for the two main characters Josie and Braham. Josie feels the need to do something to help her father who is being harassed and beaten because of his debts.  Braham is being bullied by his cousin who reminds him that he had been an indentured servant.
On the other hand, sometimes characters in stories and people in real life suffer the consequences of bad choices. That is evident in several of the other character’s lives.  I felt the story had a good mix of tension, suspense, description, and emotion. There were times I wondered how Josie was going to get out of one of her situations. The body snatching topic is not pleasant, but I feel the story is sensitive to the characters’ circumstances. I enjoyed reading this book.
Thank you to #TheYellowLantern and #NetGalley for the ARC of this book.

Step back in time to 1824 when medical science is rudimentary at best and exploratory science is booming. A dead body on the black market was worth a small fortune, and once you started down that path, it was impossible to navigate the twists and turns to find your way out.

When Josephine Clayton wakes up on the doctors examining table, with him standing over her ready to perform the post-mortem. Her life is spared, but she is ruthlessly thrown into a dark secretive ring of body-snatchers. Eager to find her way out of the endless maze of dead-end scenarios Josephine goes along with the plot to provide 1 body in place of her own on the condition that the person isn’t murdered. But will she find the price too high? Working at a cotton mill as a cover for her secret mission, she reluctantly makes friends and quickly realizes that the spider web she has found herself in only tangles around her tighter.

I enjoyed learning more about the cotton mill and meeting the girls that worked there. Each element of this story is so carefully crafted and realistic. I felt like I was part of that world. I could almost hear the steam of the machines as they roared to life and see the bits of cotton floating in the air. I could see little Liesel, the bobbin girl sitting along the wall with her basket, ready to leap up and help at a moments notice.

With vivid characters and an exciting plot, this page-turning romantic suspense will keep you up late into the night, turning pages and trying to discover what will happen next. I loved the unexpected twists and turns!

(I received a complimentary copy of this book from the author/publisher. I am not required to write a positive review. My thoughts and opinions are my own.)

I love the concept of this series and the first novel, The White City, was very well done.  The next two have missed the mark for me.  In The Yellow Lantern the subject matter is at once gruesome and fascinating.  The story line and romance, however, didn't hold my interest after the initial pages which were engaging.

The Yellow Lantern: True Colors: Historical Stories of American Crime 
by Angie Dicken 
The poverty of debt caused by illness has cost her family everything. She is lost in the complex and evil world of body snatchers and doctors in the late 1800's. She is required by the debts of her father to provide for his services. She is a healer at heart, and is conflicted by her role. Her bid to find freedom and love may bring her everything and cost her everything. Its a beautiful story with mystery center that will cause the reader to delve deeper into the concepts and conflicts. Angie Dicken has great potential in her writing, and a very faith based story line.

Wow! I was intrigued by the premise of this book, but I never imagined how hooked I would be from the first page to the last​ Although it is the third book in the series it is perfect as a standalone. 

I have never read anything by Angie Dicken, and I am pleased to say she has a new reader in me. The opening pages of this book are startling, yet so well written you almost feel it happening. Imagine waking up to discover you have been dead and buried, and a doctor is standing over you with a scalpel in his hand. Dr. Chadwick is very put out that his corpse, Josephine Clayton, is alive and so he tries to kill her but is stopped by his grave digger, Alvin. What transpires from there is a convoluted plan to keep Josephine alive by forcing her to participate in his grave robbing. She only agrees, because her father has aligned himself with the doctor and is now threatened with prison or worse by the network of grave robbers who keep the doctor (and others like him) well supplied.

Josephine is sent away from her hometown to work in a mill, and it is there she meets Braham Taylor. Braham is intrigued by the lovely Josephine and starts to fall for her. What he doesn't know is that she is there to procure bodies for the evil doctor. What happens next is too good to divulge so you'll have to read the book to find out!

A perfect mix of historical fiction, romance, mystery and murder. A combination that will keep you reading until the wee hours of the night!

I received a copy of this book courtesy of Barbour Publishing through NetGalley for my honest opinion.

True Colors is a multi-author series from Barbour Books that weaves true crime into historical fiction filled with danger and a bit of romance. The third book in the series, The Yellow Lantern by Angie Dicken, begins with a nightmare inducing scene and the tension does not let up from there.

The hazards of working in a mill, the dangers of being a female mill worker, the greed and villainy of grave robbers, and the struggles that Josephine and Braham go through all meld into an engrossing story. With personable characters and just the right touches of faith and romance to soften the horrors of the crimes involved, Angie Dicken has crafted a story that brings the past to life and sweeps the reader along through Josephine's travails and triumphs.

If you haven't yet tried the True Colors series of stand-alone novels, The Yellow Lantern is a fine place to start.

This review refers to a digital galley I read through NetGalley, courtesy of the publisher. All opinions expressed are my own.