In the Shadow of Blackbirds

I was pretty stoked to read this because I love reading about ghosts and I'm interested in the Spanish Flu epidemic (because I'm very well-adjusted, that's why.)

Unfortch, this kind of felt like the author was just like “I did so much research on Spiritualism and spirit photography and WWI and the flu and I MUST USE EVERY PIECE OF DETAIL I LEARNED OR IT WILL BE WASTED.” It also felt a bit heavy handed with its themes of equality for women and opposition to war propaganda. Like... we get it. But perhaps as a teen reader I would not mind as much. As an adult reader it was like, OK, Mary Shelley, we get it, girl power, girls can do photography too.

I liked the romance & mystery aspect more, although I was kind of disappointed that the solution to the mystery turned out to be that ghosts are real?? seemed like kind of a cop-out after all the build up about debunking fake spiritualists. Whatevs