Thank you NetGalley for approving me for this book. I am so glad I was able to read this book as I really enjoyed this and will read more by this author.

Loved the cover and that’s what pulled me in, however I found the story too slow for my personal taste

Killingly is based on the real-life disappearance of Bertha Mellish, a student at Mount Holyoke in 1897.
Her disappearance was a mystery, so Katherine Beutner has taken the few factual strands that were available and rewove an imagined tale of family trauma, male domination and the rarified world of female academia from the time.
A bold attempt. But unfortunately I found this incredibly slow moving and a bit too drawn out, which for me, didn’t hold my interest.

Bertha Mellish has disappeared. Is she dead, ran away or just in hiding. Nobody knows but can the truth be found out. Her father and sister begin to look for her and learn of a possible male interest. Her friend also seems to have something to hide. What really happened to her?

This was an interesting read. Although the case begins the story, its a bit of a slow start. Her disappearance is intriguing and although I figured out parts of it. The main conclusion was a surprise. The characters are not instantly likeable yet you start to warm to Agnes and Florence and the connection that forms. This does deal with some triggering issues so might not be for all. I enjoyed it but at times it seemed to drag a little. The ending was well done and finished everything as expected.

Took me a while to get in to this one. I always wanted to keep reading I never considered giving up at all it was just a slow burn. Which I quite like. A gothic retelling which was dark and atmospheric. Very enjoyable, easy reading.

DNF about halfway through. I really wanted to enjoy it! But ultimately it just didn't engage or interest me, and I was reading it for the sake of finishing it rather than anything else.

Based on a real life story set in the American town of Killingly, this was a very slow pace for me and the male characters were so hugely unlikeable (on purpose I'm sure!) This didn't hit the mark for me, sadly.

What happened at Killingly?
You'll find out if you read this gothic novel full of haunting, charged atmosphere and characters hiding scandalous secrets!
Katharine Beutner's story of a missing girl in a 19th century American town, and the mystery surrounding her disappearance, is captivating from beginning to end. There are themes of feminism, friendship, family secrets, trauma, and female independence woven throughout, mixed with an array of characters with unique personalities and set to a chilling background of an all-girls' prestigious university.
Trigger warnings for this book; sexual abuse, descriptions of animal cruelty.

Something about this book just didn't work for me, there were parts I liked and some twists but the main one I saw coming very early on and the writing felt disjointed to me

I was so happy to receive it from NetGalley - as a fan of Beutner's first novel, I was really happy to see her return, and this novel was still a surprise. The plot / mystery is not that mysterious (though it is well constructed, the pacing does take some getting used to), but the writing on sentence level is just wonderful, and I loved the characters and their ways of looking at the world. Agnes has this moment of thinking about kindness of strange women - or, more accurately, neighbours - and it took my breath away. And I was surprised, in a good way, by the solidarity and hope Beutner manages to imbue this book with. There is life after loss, and women can build each other up.

Warnings should be heeded re: violence, both cruelty to humans (children in particular) and animals (vivisection is a significant theme and I confess, there were moments that chilled me to the bone).

Killingly by Katharine Beutner, is a darkly written thriller based on the real-life disappearance of Bertha Mellish from Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts in November of 1897.  Not a lot is known of what happened to Bertha, her body was never found but the author has woven an exceptionally clever mystery around some of the real-life characters that existed at that time in Bertha’s life. 
 
It's quite a sad tale really, about the constraints on women in such a patriarchal society, the emerging panic as ideas of gender roles begin to shift and the regrettable truths of “what could have been” as we contemplate just how many women’s shoulders, we stand on today.
 
This was beautifully written with a great sense of the period.  The mystery was cleverly delivered, drip fed as opposed to the big revel which really worked for me, and it was packed full of interesting if somewhat hateful characters. 
 
I’m a big fan of Laura Purcell’s gothic writing, numerous times this reminded me of her work and by the end I feel it surpassed it.  I look forward to reading more from Katharine Beutner.

I was intrigued by the description of this book and must admit I thought it would be more of a mystery based thriller type of book. Once I began reading however, I found the book extremely slow with little plot and many unlikeable characters. The men are all terrible, which I feel is the main point of this book. I did engage more with the female characters and thought the author handled writing their stories graciously. Overall this book was written beautifully but was just a little too slow paced for me personally.

An atmospheric, slow burning and dark story about the disappearance of a women and the people who were near her.
Dark academic environment, complex characters, a multilayered story. The author is a good storyteller
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Based on the true story of Bertha Mellish, who went missing from Mount Holyoake College in Killingly in 1897, this story reimagines what may have happened to her. With some elements of fact, interspersed with an imaginative account, this is engaging and presents a very real (in some aspects - not sure about the furnace) possibility.

The story is gripping, made all the more so by the fact that it is a real person at the heart of it, but also very poignant. It raises extremely valid questions and concerns about the role of women within society at that time period and has some very dark themes (see TW below). My heart went out to the FMC within the book, all of whom were doing their best and making very difficult decisions within a patriarchal oppressive structure that confined them to expected gender norms. I have seen other reviews that have complained that the female characters within the book are too 'peculiar' but for me that is the very point, and the thing that makes them so likeable. I definitely felt like there was some Neuro-diversity around Agnes' character, but liked that this was the very thing that made her able to steer her own course in the face of much opposition, and in fact was the element that lead to her success with her studies etc.

I couldn't stand any of the male characters within the book. Hammond is obessesive, creepy and with more than a little aspect of grooming. His expectations of Bertha were stereotypical in the extreme and my hackles rose whenever he was on the page.

The pace of the book is slow, and I must admit that I expected more action within it's pages. Anybody coming to this expecting a fast paced mystery may well be disappointed. I did enjoy it but felt like it has been marketed to the wrong audience, as it is more a reflective account of the rights of women at the turn of the century rather than a mystery account. Indeed, the mystery element was resolved around half way through the book, with little left to surprise or grip readers in the last third. For that reason, I have given this a three star, even though I did enjoy the style of writing and admire the writers ability to fashion a full length novel from very scant historical facts.

I always loved reading fiction that’s based on real-life stories and this novel was no exception! I loved the characters, the writing style and the descriptive language the author used throughout. The only negative I have is the pacing - I found some parts of the novel were a bit slow. However, that may be because I’ve been reading quite a lot of fast-paced thrillers recently.

Stupendously good! ‘Killingly’ is a phenomenal read.

But it doesn’t match up to the blurb it’s been given (although that might, perhaps, change, prior to publication). It is marketed primarily as a crime novel, but it isn’t that. ‘Killingly’ is most comparable to Laura Purcell’s ‘The Silent Companions’ or ‘Frog Music’ by Emma Donohue; it’s not unlike Kaite Welsh’s Gothic Sarah Gilchrist series. Just like these novels, ‘Killingly’ is Historical Fiction with a vamped-up feminine drive, as Beutner concludes in her afterward to the ARC that I read: ‘Bertha Mellish lived in a profoundly unequal society. [...] In fictionalizing the aftermath of her disappearance, I’ve tried to consider what it might take for a woman of Bertha’s time to free herself from [marked] constraints and what constraints she might not even be capable of seeing, much less resisting.’

So, once you’ve stopped expecting midnight stabbings on campus grounds and started envisioning a fin-de-siècle intellective gameplay, emotional strategising between contemporary female and male characters; you’re closer to what this novel is. (Although, Chapter One gave me real ‘Dead Man’s Folly’ vibes.)

Katharine Beutner introduces characters as if with the flick of a wand: within a matter of a handful of words, Hey, Presto! Bertha speaks in your ear; Agnes is alive on the page:

‘She skimmed upon the surface of her life like a leaf on water.’

The drama in the novel is simply Hammond and Florence trying to find Bertha, and Agnes obstructing – up to a certain point - the course of the investigations. ‘Killingly’ is a double mystery, you could say: firstly, we want to know what has happened to Bertha; secondly, why Agnes is covering it up.

The plot mostly develops in the minds of the characters. The reader resides inside their ‘heads’, reading their feelings as they puzzle out the case:

‘Florence’s feelings were scattered and terrible, like the mess of little foul creatures that scuttle out from an overturned log on the forest floor.’

Yet there is also a sense of authorial distance from the characters, which does not dominate the tone, but can subtly affect and shift sympathies and allegiances:

‘[Agnes’ mind] was segmented as the chambers of a shell and similarly armoured. Unless we mean to pry her open, oyster-like, there are things we cannot know about Agnes Sullivan until we have traversed those chambers.’

So, the narrative is substantially cerebral, yet the vehicle by which it is carried is the body:

‘Mabel’s breath steamed into the tunnel of her ear, her lips brushed the shell of cartilage around it. Agnes raised her arms and enfolded Mabel awkwardly within them. The line of her corset pressed into the inside of Agnes’s elbows. She radiated heat.’

The style of ‘Killingly’ is gorgeously corporeal - readers glean more from Florence's sensations in the bathtub and Agnes's sensations as she vomits, than from any actual investigations they conduct. Beutner’s writing is fantastically well-honed and her use of figurative language is inventive, yet precise:

‘The frothy vomit gave off a hot tangy smell. Agnes wiped her mouth with the back of one shaking hand and put the basin on the floor, startled by the painful burst of laughter that had overtaken her. It seemed born from a bubble below her diaphragm – not a bubble -, no; a spiked expansion like the tropical fish she’d seen in a museum in Boston that could blow up to thrice its size.’

‘Killingly’ is carried in the female body. And this is so fitting, since the mystery to be solved is the absence of Bertha’s body, engendered fear stimulated by images of her body: Bertha drowned and bloated on the Auburn cemetery slab; Bertha bloodied and bleeding on the laundry room floor; Bertha emerging from the woods ‘mussed’ after intercourse:

‘Her breath came fast and whispery. These memories of Bertha were like membrane-covered vats of viscous liquid. She could move across their taut surfaces, seemingly secure, until the membrane split and deposited her gasping in the past.’

Animal bodies, too, stand in symbolically for Bertha’s body; it is no coincidence that two of the highlighted pursuits with which the central two girls are preoccupied are a) a debate on vivisection and, b) the dispatch of a living creature and the assemblage of its skeleton for Zoology class.

I knew nothing about the true case of a disappearance upon which ‘Killingly’ is based. But the substance of this novel is not so much the mystery of Bertha’s disappearance, but the push-pull tension between Florence and the despisable Dr Hammond in the opening movements of the story, and the additional aggrievement of Agnes in the latter half.

The timing and pacing of this tension does threaten to sag at a certain point as the reader is wearied by the accumulated hints at, and intimations of, Agnes’ withheld knowledge. Then the author intervenes just in time and changes the nature of the plot, which rekindled my interest and involvement.

Katharine Beutner serves Historical Fiction its due in her Author’s Note that accompanies the text, and had I not read that and understood the reasoning behind certain choices Beutner has made, I would have given the novel a much lower rating. Citations from this extra-textual excerpt of the eARC might be subject to amendment, but it is my sincere hope that the Author’s Note will indeed accompany the final publication – perhaps even siting if before the text.

Beutner addresses the problematic decisions that arose when she set out to fictionalise this real-life disappearance, and asserts, among other things, [SPOILERS ALERT] her ‘desire to avoid tokenizing characters of colour’ and her attempt to contextualise 1890s attitudes to abortion within what she terms the ‘landscape of social attitudes’, where ‘[ending] a pregnancy before quickening was largely normalized, seen more as a process of restoring menstruation’.

Beutner, to me most pressingly, explicates the complexities of contemporary ‘understanding of identity in relation to sexuality’, where ‘romantic friendships between women was often obscured’, and ‘the pathologization of queer sex was just beginning.’ She attests that, with ‘Killingly’, ‘I don’t want to contribute to a misunderstanding of the danger of abortion in this time period [...] any more than I want Bertha to be perceived as yet another dead fictional queer woman.’

I hope that future readers of ‘Killingly’ who develop similar reservations as I did regarding representation, will be able to digest and deliberate upon these, Beutner’s research outcomes, for this really is a phenomenal novel.

The proof that I was given the chance to read was uncorrected and changes may be made before the book is printed. Therefore, citations may be subject to alteration.

My thanks to the author and to Corvus for the chance to read and review this superb novel. (First published in hardback United States in 2023 by Soho Crime, an imprint of Solo Press; the edition I read will be published next month in the UK by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Killingly is a book based on a real life disappearance, that of Bertha Mellish, from Mount Holyoke College in the 19th century. It takes as its springboard the true events — and a fair amount of historical records end up in the book as well — and fictionalises a solution (and a little more).

The book opens following Bertha’s disappearance, when it first becomes known. The POVs mainly flit between Agnes, Bertha’s best friend, Florence, Bertha’s sister, the family’s doctor, Henry Hammond, who is somewhat suspiciously invested in Bertha being found, and Higham, a detective hired by Hammond to investigate the case. Each of them has their own concerns, worries over what might be uncovered, and desires for things to stay hidden (except Higham, who seems pretty keen to throw a spanner in the works of anyone he can).

This isn’t so much a mystery as an in depth series of character studies, I think. The mystery aspect of what happened to Bertha is uncovered (for the reader) by the two thirds mark, so the pull is more in the characters than the mystery. Their motivations and their relationships. This is a very character-driven story. First, by Bertha’s desires (for reasons that become clear), then through Hammond’s obsessive need to discover the truth, even as he despises what he hears. Perhaps not “the truth” then, but a truth that’s palatable to him.

It’s also a book about the time it’s set in. Maybe this is an obvious statement, but what I mean is that the characters it centres are, barring Hammond (who is the face of good society, I suppose you could say), are all people who are precariously positioned within society. Higham is gay, making his living discovering other people’s secrets. Agnes is in love with Bertha and wants to be a surgeon. Florence is a spinster, but with a secret that would turn everyone away from her if it were to be discovered. These are all characters to an extent forging their own paths, as society (Hammond) looms over them with dire predictions of ruined reputations.

Beutner so clearly did a lot of research to write this one and it definitely shows. You can easily believe you’re in 19th century Massachusetts. The book absorbs you and, once it has its hooks in you, it doesn’t let you go. I read the bulk of this one in a single sitting, too compelled by it to even look up.

Really, when this one comes out, I won’t be able to recommend it enough. If you like slowburning and thoughtful historical fiction, this one will definitely be for you.

Different type of historical fiction novel, similar in style to Camilla Bruce books. Interesting enough story of a girl who disappears at a ladies college in Mount Holyoake. Is she still alive? Did she take her own life or was she murdered. Always good to read about a different time period and country.

Description:
A young woman at college goes missing. Her sister, family friend, and hired detective try to work out what happened to her, whilst her best friend seems to know more than she's letting on. Based on a true disappearance in 1897, but heavily fictionalised as it was never solved.

Liked:
The historical setting is interesting, and the women in the story are nuanced and active although constrained by their circumstances. Agnes and Florence are pretty easy to root for. Beutner’s historical contextualisation, explained after the main body of the novel, gives compelling insight into her process and rationale.

Disliked:
Not a super satisfying read. The pace and content of revelations is quite humdrum, and feels fairly arbitrary: information is revealed to readers by the author rather than in line with any character's understanding. The plot feels fairly melodramatic.

Would recommend, but don’t go in expecting something earth-shattering.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. A very well written fictional account of real life missing person case. The novel was well researched and the characters truly came to life. I liked the way the author get dropping in clues to keep us interested