{"id":4655,"date":"2025-09-25T18:38:36","date_gmt":"2025-09-25T18:38:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=4655"},"modified":"2025-09-25T18:38:36","modified_gmt":"2025-09-25T18:38:36","slug":"beth-is-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=4655","title":{"rendered":"Beth is Dead"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Readers will find all the timeless themes of Louise May Alcott\u2019s <em><strong>Little Women<\/strong><\/em>\u2014family, independence, selflessness, love, ambition and sisterhood\u2014in Katie Bernet\u2019s debut YA novel, but in a contemporary setting with all the flair and complications of modern life. Mr. March, a hopelessly optimistic writer, pens a thinly disguised novel about his family, including his four daughters Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy. He feels it is his masterpiece, but the book is quickly disparaged as an unfair expos\u00e9. Most importantly, Beth dies in the novel, which results in him getting death threats; for the family\u2019s safety, he goes into hiding. Even with all this publicity swirling, the March girls and their mother keep their heads up, and Beth and Amy even go to a New Year\u2019s Eve party. When Jo discovers Beth\u2019s bed empty the next morning, she and Amy soon find her\u2014dead, with a halo of blood around her head. Nearly everyone in town is a suspect, including the March sisters, who it seems have all been keeping their own secrets. Beth may have been having second thoughts about attending the prestigious Plumfield Academy, Meg could be in love with Beth\u2019s piano tutor, Amy and her cousin Florence\u2019s art talent may not be the primary interest of their mentor, and Jo\u2019s journalistic nose for clues is quite useful. Each chapter alternates among the sisters, offering \u201cThen\u201d and \u201cNow\u201d points of view, adding to the story\u2019s layers.<strong> This has all the romance and heart of the original, with clever twists and darkness in the reimagined storyline. Readers are kept guessing until the very end as these little women find Beth\u2019s killer<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Readers will find all the timeless themes of Louise May Alcott\u2019s Little Women\u2014family, independence, selflessness, love, ambition and sisterhood\u2014in Katie Bernet\u2019s debut YA novel, but in a contemporary setting with&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":4654,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[83,247,127,213,248],"class_list":["post-4655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-family","tag-girls-women","tag-siblings","tag-thrillers-suspense","tag-young-adult"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Beth-390x400.jpeg","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Beth.jpeg","author_info":{"display_name":"Dodie Ownes","author_link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?author=15"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4655\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}