The Hangman’s Daughter

I’ve been reading some traumatic books recently. My current read (that I will most likely finish in the next couple of days) is about a kidnapping. Without giving too much away, The Hangman’s Daughter was quite traumatic as well.

I bought this book a few years ago in one of my “I don’t have enough books to read and everything I have isn’t interesting” phases. I didn’t read it until now, and I’m glad that I didn’t. Oliver Potzsch’s novel takes place in Germany in the 1660s. The author takes a quick afterword to make note that he attempted to stay historically accurate with surrounding events of the time.

Don’t let the title fool you. While the hangman’s daughter is a supporting character of the novel, it doesn’t really have anything to do with her. The two leading men, the hangman named Jakob and the son of a physician named Simon, unexpectedly join forces to solve a myriad of child murders. The town quickly places blame on the easiest suspect, a local midwife, though the gentleman know this to be a false accusation. Working together, against all kinds of forces (can’t give too much away!), they’re able to right the town and get to the bottom of this dark time.

I was really impressed with the book though. It took me a bit to get into the book. However, once I really got going, it was hard to put down! The night I finished it, I stayed up way too late and was almost useless at work the next day. One of the first things I do when I finish a book is to think of someone who I can share it with. Currently, my good friend Kayla has fallen victim to my litany of book recommendations. I would recommend this as a future read. Generally, I’m really good at locating the twists and determining an ending to a book prior to finishing it. It only took me one extra allusion to the real culprit before I got it.

I looked into it a bit and discovered that this is the first in a SIX BOOK SERIES. Y’all. How did I not know about this?! I feel like I’m one of the few who stuck with the I Am Number Four series. That was a seven book series that was about 5 books too long. I’ll have to work on collecting the rest of them.

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