A review by tormerritt
The Girl on the Velvet Swing: Sex, Murder, and Madness at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century by Simon Baatz

challenging dark informative sad tense slow-paced

3.0

This book dragged on so much that I had to listen to it through the accessibility feature on my Alexa app. It was interesting, but a lot of information was added to the story that I don't believe was needed. The story itself just made me so very sad for Evelyn. She was basically used for her beauty from a young age. The fact that her mother seemingly left her in the company of men too old to be lusting after a girl, and she seemingly didn't think anything of it... just baffles me. 

Evelyn was following her mother's dream and in doing so she unfortunately became trapped in a feud between two old insecure men which ended in murder. I just feel she was dealt a very unfortunate hand. She was far too young and naive to realize that she was in a very toxic, abusive situation. Also, we should be changing the word 'Sex' in the title to 'Rape' because that is really what this story is about. What a tragic story.
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