Review: The White City by Grace Hitchcock

Genre: Historical Romance
Publisher: Barbour Books 
Released: March 1, 2019
250 pages

About the Book:

Mysterious Disappearances Taint the Chicago World’s Fair
Step into True Colors -- a new series of Historical Stories of Romance and American Crime

While attending the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, Winnifred Wylde believes she witnessed a woman being kidnapped. She tries to convince her father, an inspector with the Chicago police, to look into reports of mysterious disappearances around the White City. Inspector Wylde tries to dismiss her claims as exaggeration of an overactive imagination, but he eventually concedes to letting her go undercover as secretary to the man in question—if she takes her pistol for protection and Jude Thorpe, a policeman, for bodyguard.

Will she be able to expose H. H. Holmes’s illicit activity, or will Winnifred become his next victim?
  

My Rating & Thoughts:    ⭐⭐⭐

Winnie goes to her father, who is the police inspector, to say she witnessed a kidnapping. She has no evidence, and her father tells her that her imagination is running wild once again. Apparently, Winnie has a history of believing she has witnessed a crime but none of which have turned out to be turn upon investigation. However, knowing the Winnie will try to look for evidence on her own, her father sends Detective Jude Thorpe to follow Winnie and keep an eye on her. Winnie discovers Jude following her and they team up to find the evidence needed. Eventually Winnie ends up undercover working for the person they suspect of committing the crime and the story follows them trying to gather the evidence needed to confirm the crime has happened. Meanwhile Winnie’s aunt is determined to get her matched up and married off so she is pushing her together with a certain guy. Winnie connects with both of the men and the story seemed to become much more romance focused with determining which man Winnie will end up with. I enjoyed the characters of Winnie and Jude but I found I didn't get very invested in the mystery part of the story. I feel like the investigation could have been a bit more detailed to make me more invested. I did not like that the villain is on the run at the end of the book and has not been stopped for his crimes. When I read the authors note at the end of the book, I felt so lost about the villain because I didn’t feel like what was written in the authors note was what I thought he was guilty of in the book. All I could think was how did I miss that? 

(I purchased my copy of this book; opinions expressed 

in this review are my honest opinion and completely my own.)