strictly literary: city of lies by victoria thompson

i am really enjoying these early twentieth-century historical fiction novels. city of lies takes place in new york and washington at the height of world war i and the protests by the suffragists. elizabeth miles is a con woman whose current mark has caught on to the scheme.

in order to escape oscar thornton's murderous thugs, elizabeth hides in plain sight with a group of women protesting the white house for the right to vote. sentenced to jail and then to a workhouse where conditions are outright horrifying, elizabeth connects with two other women, a mrs. bates and miss anna vanderslice. the three women form a bond and elizabeth finds it harder and harder to escape these friends. but not escaping puts her back in the sights of thornton and his thugs.

being a con artist, in order to save her skin, elizabeth designs another long con. hoping that this will get thornton off her back and give her a chance to escape. but the more she is drawn into life with the bates and vanderslices, the harder it is to think of life without them. especially as she finds herself attracted to gideon bates, the one person who can topple her scheme and the one person she really wants to keep the truth from.

there is romance and intrigue and feminism and lgbtq issues, and all these things resonate because the chaos and uncertainty and strong partisanship of those times reflect the ones we are living today. the world thompson weaves together for us in city of lies is based on historical fact, and feels like an accurate likeness of the world we live in today.

**city of lies published on november 7, 2017. i received an advance reader copy courtesy of penguin's first to read program in exchange for my honest review.

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