Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this ok book for an honest review. I was excited to read this book however after a couple of attempts it did not hold my attention. It was a DNF.

Wonderfully researched novel about five female serial killers in New England. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this as I had never heard of any of the women that are written about in this book.

I want to thank Netgalley and the author for gifting me the ebook. This was a very interesting book. If you are into murder history you just might want to check this book out. It just hits on female murders through history.

Couldn't stay with it. Dialogue was unrealistic and there is lots of it. I'd say try again or edit, no holds barred.

Fascinating and interesting read! For those who are interested in serial killers, this book is for you!

Meticulously researched and well put together, this book is going to take you down the poisoned path of murder, and reveals the story in-depth along the way! This is one that you do NOT want to miss!

A decent read hampered by poor formatting. A little bit pulpy for my tastes, but I did learn some new things!

The author's choice to present the information and events documented in the resource materials discovered throughout her research in typical fiction format makes for an enjoyable reading experience. The events are written in the format of a fictional novel, complete with dialogue as documented in her source materials. Through the use of this format, the character development exceeds many true crime stories, and I sensed their emotions more readily. Each of the women's stories are told in a linear, chronological order.
Keeping in mind I read an uncorrected proof of the book, my only nitpick is in the misuse of words, role vs roll, etc, and this is not a reference to the quoted material, although the use of [sic] for occurrences such as precession (i.e. procession) in quotes of diary or newspaper accounts would not have been misplaced if it had been used.
Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for providing a copy of this book to read and review. The opinions expressed here are my own honest, voluntarily written opinions.

I find True Crime books, like Pretty Evil New England by Sue Coletta, hard to rate. Research is vital, but also, the way the book is written can make it easier or harder. Since the murders took place in the late 1800s and early 1900s, I can see why research materials would be lean. Time, fires, and many other things can contribute to that.

I love to hear the characters speak in their own words, and Sue Coletta gave them voices. I love looking into their minds, even though I know I will never understand them. Bad upbringing, nature/nurture…no excuses…whether they are sociopaths, psychopaths, or just plain evil, playing with their victims, it doesn’t matter. A choice is a choice.

Five women: Jane Toppan, Lydia Sherman, Nellie Webb, Harriet E Nason and Sarah Jane Robinson are five people you would never want to be friends with or related to them. They were responsible for more than one hundred deaths.

Males hunt, females gather, and that is how they choose their victims too.

We get the lowdown on the serial killers with their own words, interviews, court transcripts, newspapers, libraries, historical societies…Sue shared glimpses into these five women’s lives. I love learning where they came from, their childhood, their family, marriages, children, friends…

Even when they confess, there is doubt if they are telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Myself, I doubt it. I think they revel in the attention they receive.

Sue Coletta has included some medical and other related trivia from the times. I love when an author does this. For example, Mercury was a common medical treatment, but when Abraham Lincoln used it and found out for himself how harmful it is, he stopped its use.

Not all questions will be answered, but isn’t that why we read? We want to figure things out for ourselves.

I voluntarily reviewed a free copy of Pretty Evil New England by Sue Coletta.

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This is a very intriguing book. If you can get through the entire middle. The first case, that of “Jolly” Jane Toppan moves along at a good pace in both storytelling and details. Then we get to the 2nd story in the book and here it takes a turn for me. The second story dragged on for a very long time and was so dry that I thought of quitting several times. I forced myself through because I wanted to read about the other killers (I’m a true crime fan and listen to several podcasts about the subject). I breathed a deep sigh of relief when I finally finished the second one and was on to the next. It was a little better, moved along at a nice pace, not overly filled with unnecessary points. Then we get to the end and we’re thrown back and forth between two different killers. It was muddied and at times confusing, trying to keep which person killed was part of which killers legacy.
You could tell that the author definitely did her research into each case.
I did receive this as an ARC from Netgalley, and was actually looking forward to reading it, but with the 2nd story dragging on, and the muddied way the last two stories were told, I did not enjoy it nearly as much as I thought I would. It was almost like different authors with different writing styles tackled the different killers.

**I received this as an ARC from Netgalley and this is my honest and voluntary review.

I love that these stories were clearly extensively researched and had a lot of actual quotes from the people involved, but for some reason the book overall just didn't grab me and hold my attention well. I think part of the problem was the formatting of the e-book, but I cannot confirm without seeing a hard copy. It just seemed like there were a lot of unexpected changes in POV, and maybe they were more clearly transitioned in the hard copy, but it made the story a bit confusing at times.

Each story was very thorough, though the post-crime/arrest portions were a bit drawn out for my taste.

Wow! This was an interesting read. I enjoy Ms. Coletta’s fiction stories and this was my first read of a true crime story by her. I always find her stories to be intriguing and entertaining and she never disappoints.

I have always thought of women serial killers to be more passionate about their victims and this book showed a couple of more sides to the killers themselves. The reasons behind their killings as well as the relationships with their victims.

It has always intrigued me as to the character and disposition of someone that can take a life. If I think about it, I consider most killers to be killers of passion, someone that kills due to anger, love triangle, or wrong place, wrong time, but a serial killer has a completely different mindset, of which I have not ever thought of. Ms. Coletta has now opened my eyes and my mind to this with Pretty Evil New England. The women in this book that were accused of being killers are a range in age, societal standing and temperament. Most are women with families.

Jane Toppan is a woman with a mind of steel but with shards as far as I can surmise. What brings her to determination to kill? How has she picked her victims? She has a line of deaths behind her but unfortunately, some of those deaths will never be solved because she wouldn’t share them with anyone.

Lydia Sherman is a woman that is hard to read. She’s a woman that has been married a few times and doesn’t seem to have any real love for anyone. She has no discern for her victims, even though she may show a soft side in public, her actions behind closed doors are not as kind and soft. Does she kill because she does not like to be the one to have to support her family, or does she do it because she can?

Nellie Webb is a young woman that would not generally be a suspect. She’s young and kind. However, there is another side to her. What happened to Nellie, did she stop killing, did she change her name and live a full life, or did she just disappear?

Sarah Jane Robinson, on the outside she appears to be a loving, caring, kind sister, mother, and person, but she has a sinister side to her, and she has no problem using her womanly wiles to her advantage.

Harriet Nason is not a woman that has a lot of friends, she is probably the one killer in this book that people would suspect as being sinister. She keeps to herself and her immediate family, she’s distant from her community with only a few close friends.

I find it interesting how the mind works and have always been interested in the mind of criminals. I want to know what makes them tick and why they have the desire to be the person they are. While most people have morals and standards of right and wrong, what causes a killer to have their own standards and the desire to kill? Is it due to their upbringing, their childhood due to trauma, or is just because their mind works differently? I also find it intriguing that some of these women believed and vocalized their innocence until the very end, and that some of them walked away without any repercussions. In the time period of these stories, society saw women as being the nurturing, caring, kind human and men as being the violent, cruel, hard human. This was one mistake that led to the mishandling of some of these cases, in my eyes. Women are vicious, dangerous, and more deceptive than some people realize. I love that Ms. Coletta delved into these stories and told them. She’s a great storyteller, whether it be fiction or true crime. I live in New England and these stories were close to home. While this was my first read of one of Ms. Coletta’s True Crime Novels, it won’t be my last. She makes me think and opens my mind to intriguing stories. I have always had an interest in crime stories, and she feeds that interest in her writing of fiction and true crime. I look forward to more and give this book a 5-star review.

A nice little addition to the true crime genre! Coletta's book explores five 19th century female serial killers and walks you through their crimes, trial, and life.

This is a great introduction to the genre because of it's simple structure and journalistic voice. The journalistic approach allows the research and archival material to be easily inserted and understood while the simple structure of the chapter-by-chapter linear timeline is easy to follow when discussing multiple names and locations. I enjoyed how "bite-sized' this felt without feeling too much like an encyclopedia of serial killers.

Readers won't get any type of psychological or medical insight into these women--only their stories. This isn't necessarily bad, but it does stop the narrative from going beyond an introductory true crime book. While the title and stories do focus on female serial killers, it is important to note that there's no feminist lens being used to analyze or understand these stories. One may argue that the act of writing a book on female killers is a feminist undertaking but it doesn't go past that as a feminist text. Again, this isn't necessarily a dig but I do think readers (at least, I did) will be expecting more of a nuanced view of the female serial killer narrative.

I can't wait to recommend this to readers wanting to dive into the true-crime genre!

I was only familiar with the case of Jane Toppan when opening this book. The chapter on her was familiar but similar to the other chapters, the formatting was bit awkward. In each chapter, the trials slowed the book down and sometimes felt repetitive and dry. This might have been due to the fact that all the murders were conducted using the same method, so a lot of the details of the cases felt like they blended together. The cases that I found to be the most interesting were Jane Toppan and Nellie Webb. Although these 5 women were interesting, it would have been nice to see a wider range of women criminals outside of poisoners. I think the book is a good read for anyone that is interested in true crime and women criminals in particular.

Currently, female serial killers get little coverage from the media. Sue Coletta's chilling account of five women--serial killers--in Nineteenth Century New England is a page-turner. Rather than an totally objective, documented account, Coletta writes these accounts in more the manner of a novel. The women become fully-developed characters from the court records and testimony. The book details the differences between the motivations and methods of the female killer and the male killer and is highly enlightening. A true-crime "must read."

Several recent books have delved into the minds of women serial killers in general, but Pretty Evil New England is the first to narrow the focus on women serial killers in New England. In this book, true crime writer and author of The Grafton County mystery series, among others, Sue Coletta takes readers to nineteenth century New England, introducing them to five women who defied all societal expectations of women as nurturers and caregivers by becoming serial killers. The author describes the relationships each of these women had with their victims, how they plotted to kill, which instruments of death they employed, and their motivations for killing, leaving a chilling effect on the reader. Coletta consulted newspaper articles, court proceedings, police interviews, and personal correspondence of the serial killers and their victims in researching for the book. Photographs of the murderous women, their husbands, neighbors, relatives and even the enemies they murdered, the tools they used to kill, and places of significance appear throughout the book, making their murderous sprees feel more immediate. Recommended for true crime fans and anyone interested in New England history.

I can't say enough enough about how much I LOVED this deliciously evil true crime novel. All five of these cases feature women serial killers. Ms Coletta has written a well researched, thoughtful study of these women and their victims. I also liked the photos etc included in the book.

I thought this book was so boring. I had to skim huge chunks just to get through. I’m sorry to say that because I love true crime and was very excited to read this book. The only saving grace (which moved my rating up to 2 stars) was the amount of research and quotes from primary sources.

Like others, I found the formatting to be a pain when sent to my kindle, but I didn’t take that into account when rating the book.

Thanks to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

For such brief accounts of each murderer, author Sue Coletta includes a lot of detail! I have never heard of any of these crimes before (no Lizzie Borden here!), so I found this book to be extremely interesting.

This book is about five female serial killers back in history. It is one of the best true crime books I have read . The author Sue Coletta writes in details of the murders , she did her research well and I love how she tells the story . I will be looking forward to more from this author in the true crime genre .

I have been a fan of Sue Coletta for some time now, so I knew this book would feature her sharp writing, as always. But this book, being an account of female serial killers, was sharply researched to the point that the reader felt we actually knew these women. While I cannot understand how a woman can get away with poisoning an entire family, it was fascinating, in a morbid sort of way, to read about the women who did get away with murder. For a while.

Sue takes us back through history and peels back the layers of these women's depravity, manipulations and guiltless power and control. Their stories actually made me shudder a few times. They were not alone in their penchant for murder, but their lack of remorse certainly makes them stand out from the annals of history, brought forward by Sue's mastery with the written word.

If true crime is your thing, get this book. You won't be disappointed.

Thanks go to Sue and her publisher, and NetGalley, for the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.