I received this book via NetGalley. This did not impact my rating or review.
The Women in White follows two different timelines and at one point, five different women. Timeline one is set in the present day with a woman named Riley applying for a caretaker position after she is dealt a huge blow by her ex-husband. Riley needs the job and a roof over her head. She is interviewed by an elderly woman named Betty who gives Riley the job minutes later. Betty then eventually asks Riley to figure out what happened to her three friends she went to university with in the 1960s. Betty doesn’t provide details, but just says she lost touch with all of them. And Riley notices that Betty’s house is like a homage to the 60s, but she has no tv or cell phone, anything that is modern in any way. Riley is at first confused why she can’t find any mention of the women that Betty was friends with (Helen, Ivy, and Kathleen) but then later on things are revealed about why the women were in essence erased from the university and the experiments that were done to them. The book shifts between Riley trying to track the other women down and then Betty and her three friends, Helen, Ivy, and Kathleen going through experiments back in the 1960s.
I honestly could not give this more than 3 stars because though I was fascinated by the real life experiments and cases dealing with parapsychology that Pekkanen pastes at the top of the chapter headers, the book becomes very disjointed because of the dual timelines and separate characters. I just had a hard time following some of the book and I just wish we had focused on Betty and her impressions of her husband, Dr. Trimble, and her friends. Having things jump around so much didn’t give the characters a lot of time to be fully developed in my opinion.
The plot such as it was was interesting, but I think that adding a whole mystery/kidnapping to this book really didn’t help. I think that Pekkanen could have just kept this historical fiction and had Riley trying to figure out what happened to Betty’s friends and that was it. I think the mystery took away from things in my mind since it felt like it came out of nowhere.
The ending was just so-so. I thought Pekkanen was doing a great job of the misogyny of some of the male characters we see. But I had a hard time with the explanation of what happened to everyone and why. Again, it just felt like a different book than the one I was reading.
- And – another book in the series, or by the same author; something that adds knowledge. Honestly, I think for me this was definitely an adds knowledge one. This is a historical fiction novel, and though I didn’t enjoy it much, I was interested in how Pekkanen added in actual historical quotes/comments from people who were doing parapsychology experiments. I don’t think things like this exist, but did like that she added to my knowledge of this actually being things that people were tested on and certain governments were trying to do which at times feels a bit silly. Having someone able to read someone’s mind a country away I can see as being useful, I just think I have too much cynicism in me thinking any of this ever worked and not just lucky guesses.
