Book review: Frog Music

Title: Frog Music
Author: Emma Donoghue
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Summary:  It's the summer of 1876 and San Francisco is going through a heat wave and a small pox epidemic.  Blanche is a French burlesque dancer.  Blanche had a baby a little over a year ago but the baby is being taken care by somebody else.  After all, a baby doesn't really fit into a burlesque dancer's lifestyle.  Her new friend Jenny is outspoken, wears pants at a time when it's illegal for women to wear pants, and mysterious, among other things.  She also challenges Blanche to rethink her life and some of the decisions she's made.

Jenny's murdered one night but was the bullet meant for Blanche instead?  Blanche makes it her mission to figure out who killed her friend and discovers that she didn't really know that much about her new friend.

Review:  I really wanted to like this book.  I think I even put it first on my hold list because I wanted to read it sooner rather than later.  But then I unintentionally requested the large print version of the book.  I hate reading the large print versions.  They're so much bigger and you read and read and read but don't feel like you're getting anywhere.  So I think that was hanging over me the whole time I read it.

There were so many promising elements to this story--it was based on a real unsolved murder, it had elements of women breaking boundaries and seeking redemption.  It had elements of women empowering themselves.  It took place in San Francisco.  Yet, none of these things really came together for me in this book.