Okay, I'm not gonna lie, this caught my eye on NetGalley because it had a pigeon on the cover and--long story short--I really love pigeons and think they are underrated birds that deserve more love. When I read the description I was a bit confused about what pigeons had to do with Lizzie Borden, but super intrigued by the premise. 
 See What I Have Done is a fascinatingly twisted and beautifully written book. It tells the story of the dysfunctional family behind the real-life horror story, about the messy relationships between Lizzie, her sister Emma, and Mr. and Mrs. Borden (their father and stepmother). 
 This book grabs you from the first page, with Lizzie's vibrant, chaotic voice and chilling description of her father's gruesome remains. (I should add that this book does contain some pretty gory and disturbing scenes, so if that's not something you're okay with this might not be for you.) That opening chapter gave me goosebumps, and I knew I was in for a psychological roller coaster ride with her. The chapters are written in multiple POVs that create a rich, overlapping narrative, allowing the reader to piece together the events leading up to and immediately following the murder. One of the biggest problems that multiple-POV narration often runs into is that the voices tend to blend into one another, but I'm happy to say that that is not the case here. Lizzie, Emma, Bridget (their maid), and Benjamin (a young man who gets caught up in the events of the crime) each have a distinct voice and uniquely compelling way of telling their story. 
 The way all of the characters' lives and wishes and frustrations were all tangled up together was intense and pretty fucked up sometimes, but utterly fascinating to read about. The only character I didn't particularly care about was Benjamin: I could see how his chapters were important, but there were several times when I found myself skimming them, wondering when we would get back to the main plot. The ending also felt a bit dragged out. A lot of the historical information about the arrest and trial was kind of dumped on the reader via Benjamin's POV, and I feel like the plot could have wrapped up more concisely. The pacing just seemed odd, but it was all still interesting enough that I never really got bored. 
 This was a haunting and intriguing book about the ugly things people do and say to each other, and the impossibility of truly knowing what the ones you love are capable of. 
 Favorite quotes (basically the whole book was a fav quote bc it was all beautiful, but here's a few that show off Schmidt's stunning writing): 
 All the little strings that hold a body together threatened to undo. 
 I woke to a morning that was half awake. I looked around my room, had that feeling that someone had reached inside my body and pulled me out backwards, had left me with nothing but animal noises dripping from behind. 
 Night carved out the moon. Things became quiet. 
 She made my teeth want to sink into her flesh and eat her out of my life, made me want to swarm her mind and sort through all the thoughts she had of me, that I was being too stubborn, I was being too secretive, I was being bad, I was, I was. I felt her nastiness crawl over my skin, tiny deaths that made me want to become nothing. 
 Every adult that had ever held me as a baby was dead and no one would ever carry me again. 
 I received an ARC of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. 
 This review was also posted on my blog.