bookheaven | To Slip the Bonds of Earth (Reply)

To Slip the Bonds of Earth (Katharine Wright, #1)

To Slip the Bonds of Earth by Amanda Flower

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I am lucky to get to see the author at the Ohioana Book Festival yearly and got this one from her there. I have a love hate relationship with what is essentially real person fanfic adjacent. Usually it's hate. I like the idea but not the execution but I'm happy to say here I enjoyed both. One of the discussion questions was did I know the Wright Brothers had sister before the book. Honestly, no and now I do want to look her up which if that's all I took away from this, that's awesome enough.

Of course there is the whole mitigation of some of the tension in real person as sleuths mysteries because we know that XYZ didn't happen (unless this is also alternative history which it's not). So when Orville and Wilbur return to Dayton from Kitty Hawk for the holidays and Orville loses documents with notes for their flying machine, the idea that someone will beat them to the punch you know it didn't happen.

And that is the motivation here, in part. Katharine is a teacher at a school, wanting to teach Greek but being passed over by less qualified men. She is teaching Latin and Benny, son of Randolph Shaw, paper mill magnate, is giving her problems so she claps back. She plans to talk to his mother at the Shaw's mansion at the Christmas party she was invited to. Orville goes with her. He's humiliated by Hermann who ends up dead with Orville's screwdriver in his chest and Orville's drawing have been stolen from his jacket. Benny is there covered in blood.

Naturally Benny is arrested and Katharine really isn't investigating that, though she is concerned about her student (pain in the butt as he is). She's investigating the loss of her brother's drawings. Of course these two things dovetail.

I liked Katharine as a character and the other characters original and actual were both very good. The mystery was satisfying and I'd like to see more of this. Also I plan to go poke around Dayton (I don't live that far away) as I haven't investigated it well.

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