Sigh. What a great book this was. I was initially skeptical for how Lippman was doing this (interview style format sprinkled with third person POVs) but it really works. I also liked the conversation around motherhood. A mother killing their child is seen as being a horrific thing with a lot of people not even wanting to get to the point they can understand how that happens. I thought that everything really worked in this one. The characters, the writing, the flow, and even the slowly dawning reality of what type of mother Melisandre Harris Dawes was before and is now. 

In "Hush Hush" Tess takes on a client that will challenge her ideas on motherhood and marriage. She's asked by her uncle (still funny)Tyner Gray to take on Melisandre as a client. Melisandre more than a decade earlier left her two month old daughter in her car in the summer. The baby died, and though the prosecution was eager to convict her, she was judged temporary insane. Giving up custody of her other two daughters, she has lived overseas. Now with her mother's death, she's returned to Baltimore to try to forge a relationship with her two surviving daughters, Alanna and Ruby. She plans on using a documentary that is being made about her as a way back into her daughters lives. But now there are questions resurfacing about what really happened ten years ago. With Tess dealing with increasingly threatening notes about how she is as a mother, her emotions are raw with dealing with Melisandre. Another murder though lives more questions with Tess trying to figure out who has killed before and who has killed now.  

As Lippman delves, you have her focusing mostly on mothers who get rid of their children for another man, another future, or you have those who in the moment, were truly insane and did not have control over their own actions (like Andrea Yates). Since Tess is now a mother of a toddler and still living with Crow, she has a lot of questions about how she is as a mother, is she doing enough, is she not there for her daughter, and the case has her thinking on what makes a marriage too. There is mention of Medea in the book and in the author's afterword. I am definitely one of those mythology readers who thought Jason was terrible and Medea got a raw deal. 

I loved we get more character POVs in this one, we have Tess's partner Sandy, her aunt, her client, Melisandre (or Missy), Melisandre's two daughters, the documentary filmmaker, Harmony, and even other characters via interview.  Each person gives you a perspective not only on Melisandre, but on what is going in motion in the here and now. I liked the questions being asked about motherhood, why do women try to have it all. Part of you is going to despise Melisandre, but also like how she is clearly able to see the traps with motherhood and within her own marriage. And then you are going to despise her all over again.

What I thought was interesting about this one is that we get a special insight into Tyner and his relationship with Tess's aunt Kitty. And we even get insight into Kitty via another character as well. I think this book just pushes at preconceived notions about motherhood or marriage. We have Tyner saying that he never wanted to marry, but he met Kitty and that was it. When you see how he is linked to Melisandre though, you start to have a lot of questions. I thought it was great though. The whole book and characters were messy. 

I thought the writing was great though the interview style format was a bit hard to get into at first. It works though and after I got to the ending, I went back to some parts of it. The flow worked really well too. 

The ending was a shocker though. I loved the reveal about things before and now. I mean Lippman doesn't spell out things in the before for you, but you get enough to realize what really happened ten years ago (or at least I did). 

The ending also leaves things slightly changed between Tess and Crow and their future. 

I hope one day Lippman revisits this character/series. I love Tess and she's been a great character to follow in 2019. 

That ending was definitely a shocker showing us what happened. I have so many comments. I wish Lippman would revisit Tess. This ended up being one of my favorite series. 

Curious a out this case. The interview style format is messing with the flow a bit though.

Well this wasn't a bad short story involving Tess. I liked the overall message about the importance of books, but think at times that Lippman via Tess was throwing way too much out there about how readers that use e-book readers, and or bookstores to help them find books as being less than other readers was a bit much. I definitely get the pangs one gets when small bookstores and the like close. There was a used bookstore up the street from me that closed that I felt guilty about, but the owner was a bit....he was just a bit, but also the books I donated he seemed to get annoyed by since he didn't have a lot of room for them. I just started taking books to the local library to donate instead and went to other bookstores in Old Town that didn't make me feel like an interloper. Anyway, I digress, back to the book, it's a clever little mystery, though it hurt my heart a bit when you find out what has been happening to the missing books. 

"The Book Thing" is a perfect short story to whet your appetite a bit. It's now been two years or so since the events in the last book and Tess is still a private investigator. Now though she spends her days taking care of her daughter Carla Scout. Going to their local children's bookstore is something that they try to do to pass the time as well as pass on the love of books to her daughter. While there though, Tess gets caught up in a case of book theft when an employee explains to Tess that a lot of books are being stolen which is hurting the store's bottom line. 

Tess is more settled in this one. She references the last book a bit when she mentions being on bed rest prior to her daughter's birth. And she mentions the books she read and how many books she has to go. Though Tess doesn't like the owner of the book store much, she feels obligated to help her out since she doesn't want businesses like this disappearing from Baltimore.

Tess also goes into The Book Thing which is an actual business in Baltimore where people can take as many books as they want. Check out the site, https://bookthing.org/. I am so going to visit this, maybe this upcoming weekend since I have free time. I love that the limit is 15,000 books at one time. I can't imagine hauling that much away. They are not taking donations right now, but I still want to see what books they have available. I definitely want to use this place as a resource. 

As I said above, Lippman seems at time to be hinting at how e-readers ruined many bookstores. However, I have to push back on that. Having an e-reader actually allowed me to read more. I buy books via my local bookstores whenever possible. But since I travel a lot, I like to actually purchase books that I can read via that so I don't have to cart 10 plus books around with me. And you all laugh, but yes I packed books back in the day. The worst was probably when I went to Sri Lanka and brought 12 books with me. My thing though was to leave whatever books I found to just be okay at the front desk of the hotel I was at. Heck, I went to Jordan and they called me the girl with the books when I was there on R & R. I was in freaking heaven and just read books from sun-up to sun-down. Back to the case for e-readers, you can make the fonts larger so you can view the text and you don't have to worry about your book pages getting damaged or ripped. When I traveled that happened to me too many times to count.

The writing was fine and the flow was too. Lippman shows you can write a short story and actually develop the characters in it. I liked how she figured out what was going on and her resolution for things.

I do get what Lippman/Tess is saying in this one and how she fears as her daughter grows up she will have less use for books and less interest in classics, but I guess I don't see things that way. My nephews and nieces devour books and this past summer my nephew even asked me to send him classics. I posted about that here on Booklikes. I think kids do love books, but you have to sell it to them as an adventure and not a chore they must do. My parents were both big readers and my favorite memories is sneaking under my parents bed to find books they were reading that I secretly read and put back so they didn't know I was reading them too. How I found out about romance books and "throbbing members."

If I go to The Book Thing, will take pictures and post here.