Review of Last Dance Before Dawn

I'm thrilled to be welcoming back author Katharine Schellman. Last time, I got to interview her and review A Scandal in Mayfair, the latest book in her Lily Adler series. This time she back with her other historical mystery series The Nightingale Mysteries and celebrating the release of Last Dance Before Dawn in paperback!

More about Last Dance at Dawn

Vivian Kelly has finally created a home and a family at the glamorous speakeasy known as The Nightingale, where no one cares who you are in the daytime. After all, in the underground world of 1920s New York City, everyone has a secret to keep, and they’re on the Nightingale's dance floor to leave those secrets behind. But sometimes it takes more than a dance to escape your past.

When a stranger from Chicago shows up at The Nightingale looking to settle old scores, Vivian and the Nightingale's owner, the mysterious and alluring Honor Huxley, send him packing. They soon discover, though, that the stranger was just a warning. Slowly, the people who have made The Nightingale their home realize that someone is following them. Hunting them. And that someone won’t stop until they unravel a mystery that’s been cold for years: a missing girl, a boy out for revenge, and a truck full of cash that disappeared in a job gone horribly wrong.

Vivian just wants to protect the people she loves, and she's willing to dig into the dirt of the past to make it happen. But some questions are safer left unanswered, and now that Vivian has built a family for herself, she has more to lose than ever before.

More About Katharine Schellman

Katharine Schellman is an award-winning author of historical crime fiction, including the Nightingale Mysteries and the Lily Adler Mysteries, whose work has been called “worthy of Rex Stout or Agatha Christie” (Library Journal). Her books have been nominated for an Edgar and a Silver Falchion, and she has won a Zibby Media National Book Award for "Best Book for the History Lover." A former actor, onetime political consultant, and graduate of William & Mary, Katharine lives and writes in the mountains of Virginia.

Catch Up With Katharine Schellman

Website: www.katharineschellman.com

Instagram: @katharinewrites

Facebook: @katharineschellman

Thoughts About Last Dance Before Dawn

Last Dance Before Dawn was the fourth and final book in the Nightingale series so that may be a deal breaker for some readers. This was my first foray into the Nightingale series and, although there were references to events from past books, I still found it easy to get swept up in this book's plot even though I didn't know all the details about the characters' past relationships, decisions and adventures. In fact, those little peeks made me eager to read

the first three books.

Schellman's writing is rich with detail and she paints a picture of the Roaring 20s that is both glittering and dangerous. In keeping with the time period, many of the characters including the beautiful and determined Vivian are navigating between the legal, everyday world and the shady underworld populated by (sometimes charming) criminals, corruption and impossible choices. Everyone is well-developed, influenced by multiple forces and struggling with their options. Readers are kept guessing throughout the book about which world each character will ultimately claim as their own.

The plot itself was a spiderweb. It started with one brief, seemingly unimportant, event but it grew and grew until it involved everyone to varying degrees. Characters, events and decisions overlapped in unexpected and sometimes complex ways reaching back years. Yet somehow, in the end the series is neatly tied up giving everyone a satisfying ending or perhaps a new beginning.

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