I remember reading this in the short story collection a few years back but I forgot just exactly how the culprits did it.

The best part was the penultimate line of dialogue:
‘I wonder if you’ll ever commit a crime Poirot… I bet you could get away with it alright’

3.75
I've never read a historical paranormal story rooted around real events like the resurgence of the klan before, so I learned a lot about the US in the 1920s and how the resurgence came about. I thought the fantasy elements and plot were melded well around the real life events, and I loved all the different layers of paranormal happenings- from Nana Jean to the haints and the sword to the Night doctors as well as all the different groups and things going on in Maryse's life. Selling Mama's water and hunting Klu Kluxes, and Butcher Clyde's emerging out of nowhere between one day and the next on top of the main plot made it feel more layered and the Butcher Clyde part made added a sense of foreboding to an already dismal situation. It also added to that creepy town vibe which I love. I really loved the scene of Maryse traversing into the world of the Night doctors, the descriptions of the setting, the Angel Oak tree and how she fell into it were so magical and whimsical. The descriptions of the settings and descriptions in general were probably my favourite part of the story.

The ending sequence really seemed like a movie's ending (especially the part where the projector was projecting scenes from birth of a nation onto the Grand Cyclops) and I liked that every element of the team was needed to defeat the evil. I know it's fantasy but I also like that it took the Night doctors, other supernatural beings to actually take down the Grand Cyclops and I loved them taking her for their research.

I guess because the story is a short one but I was more attached to the plot than the main character, although I was really liking Sadie and was literally telling myself 'I think she's going to die in the final battle but I'm pretty sure I'm going to be fully attached to her within the next chapter' but alas she got killed off and it was a shame. I would have been interested in seeing the whole Maryse falling into anger and then being forced to confront that anger that shield grief sequence without the death of Sadie but I understand it was necessary, I'm just biased. I liked the ending and the fact that Maryse will still keep going on. I don't know if this is a series or not but I think ending it here too is just as good an ending.

2.5
I don't think this rating is too fair, considering there were some poems I enjoyed. but looking at the collection as a whole, there were more that had me looking to see how long I had left to read. And usually I like to read a little bit of poetry at a time, but I think the poems didn't captivate me enough to for me to do that.

I liked the incorporation of bees into the poems, honey as poetry but I wish that all of the poems stuck to the bee theme and we went in depth with the analogy of bees, nature and the ecosystem to talk about some of the topics touched on in this book like climate change, the grief over losing a mother, the west's invasion of Iraq. That being said, I did enjoy some of the whimsy poems that didn't relate to bees like John Barleycorn, character personifying barley from Scottish folklore. But barley is still a plant, a part of nature so I wish the collection had more of a focus on nature, especially the ones bees frequent.

I'll be checking out more from Carol Ann. I remember studying her as a child, and I want to revisit some of the poems I studied. I do love their style of poetry, I just want to read poetry that is either more in depth and/or with more of a focus on a certain theme if the title alludes to it having one.

That being said the poems I enjoyed and would like to reread as often as I can are:

Ariel
Politics
John Barleycorn
Spell
The bee carol
Crunch

Intriguing so far but the constant flashbacks are confusing. I really hope Jung is actually morally ambiguous. I love that it’s set in uni.

Seol is so skeptical and overthinks everything, she’s so me.

3.5
It’s starting to get good. Why do I feel like people don’t actually like Jung, they just fake it. I’m specifically talking about the guys. Jung’s people pleasing, pretty privilege and money has got a lot of people loving him or loving what he can do for them, and that popularity is power. Power that he uses to keep the creepy guys at campus under check. I feel like the assistant Jung sort of threatened had something to do with Juyeon’s break from school, it’s a theory but maybe he was being a creep. He also keeps Sangcheol away from Ayoung and he keeps Yonggun in check. He might find Seol a breath of fresh air as he doesn’t have to people please as much, she can see through him but she’s not doing any harm. Idk about that last theory about him having perfectly pure intentions with Seol but everything else stands.

3.95 but it's really 4 stars
Honestly I just took off 0.5 stars for that ending where Kenneth so audaciously tells Rosamund to give up her dressmaking business and come with him to the country. But tbh she did say that's all she ever wanted to do, but he didn't know that at the time he said it so -0.5 for the man's audacity to try to get in between her and her money.

The rest of the book was excellently done. My favourite Christie books are where the dynamics and perceptions everyone have of the victim and the murderer/s are wrong, either because their imbued with the cast's own prejudices and/or the murderer/s put on an act. Think the Mysterious affair at styles or Death on the Nile. The classic pretending to be in love with Alina and the forgotten wife/partner dynamic is one that was done in Death on the Nile, and Miss Christie really does seem to enjoy writing a character that everyone thinks is a young simple minded fool in love with a calculative woman, only for his simple mind to be focused on more base desires like money and violence.

I've seen the TV episode for this about 233482 times growing up, it's the one Poirot episode they repeated every other week on TV. And still the story was compelling and well crafted. In particular, the stage the murderers set up, how they created false alibis and of course Christine pretending to be the dead body of Alina was excellent. only shaky thing that prevented me from giving this 4.5 stars was the fact that it would have been much smarter for the culprits to be swindlers that just left and disappeared after extorting money from their victims. Instead they murdered because Patrick wanted to but it didn't seem like someone as calculating and calm as Christine would just allow that to happen when they could just disappear. For the previous murder it made sense since the victim had taken out life insurance but Alina did no such thing here. Once Kenneth, her husband, had caught on to what had happened they could be long gone, and probably untraceable considering that Redford isn't even their real name and that disappearing like that was much easier during that time period.

I did like the cast of characters. The Gardeners were the American comic relief I suppose, but I did really vibe with the whole yapper x silent adoring listener dynamic they had, and I did like Mr Gardener. Mr Black and his whole drug plotline was very obvious and made to be so, so I'm glad it didn't take too much page time, it was more to lead us astray as to the 'why' question of the murder. The usual strongset scruffy middle aged woman and retired army whatever appeared in this story, but they were distinctive characters in their own right.

What I really came to appreciate by the end of the book were the themes and messages of the book. Firstly with Alina, we didn't really get to see her interact with anyone up close and she didn't have any interaction with Poirot other than her saying not to tell anyone where she was going. At first I was disappointed since not getting a feel for the personality of the victim kind of made me think the story might fall flat. But I believe seeing her up close and on page often was deliberately withheld from us as we would have instantly known she was not the conniving maneater everyone believed her to be. We would have sensed her naivety and that would have made readers suspect Redford from the beginning. But it was interesting to read how everyone so quickly disparaged Alina, saying 'she was a bad lot through and through' or that they felt sorry for Ms Redford and that Mr Redford was the naive fool. It speaks volumes as to how people are much quicker to disparage the reputation of a woman, to assume they know her, to make her out to be conniving and morally bankrupt. How much more people want to blame women, men and women alike as all the characters bar Mr Gardener and Poirot kept alluding to her being a seductress and a gold digger. It really showed the internalised misogyny of all the characters, and even after Poirot reveals the truth Ms Gardener still thinks poorly of Alina. There was also a lot of discussion around brains and good sense being a more praise worthy feature for women to have which was interesting to read.

All in all this was good and I understand why it's considered one of Christie's top 10.

An important read that's great at introducing discussions about the basic elements of racism and how its embedded part of the system of society. Whilst I think I knew a lot of the points, statistics and forms of racism already, this is something I would have loved to have read just as I begun teenage hood, it would have helped inform a lot of the things I was noticing and learning about the world. But reading it right now I also learnt things, like how to take control of conversations instead of letting my emotions completely take over when discussing race with other people. Some statistics like how 40%+ of Asian American women will experience domestic violence in their lifetimes and have the highest/one of the highest rates of suicide I did not know. I liked the discussion at the end about how to act as well as talk about racial issues. The need to boycott and refuse to elect people who jeopardize the safety of ethnic minorities were pertinent. But I wish this part of the discussion was longer and more in depth. I would have liked a step by step action plan on how the general population can take back power from governments, starting with organizing communities on a small level and then branching out, in order for the boycotts and other actions to be properly effective. But I know that's a lot to ask and might detract from the main point of the book.
Overall, it's an important read, definitely a book that helps you start thinking about race critically, but your journey should not end there.