Full review at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books 
 I hadn't intended to review Chapelwood for Smart Bitches, but as soon as I told my fellow Bitches that I was reading a book in which Lizzie Borden fights Lovecraftian monsters with an axe, something really alarming happened. Their eyes got really big and they started drooling and tentacles sprang forth and reached out towards the book that was inconveniently located in my hands, and they gibbered, "GIMMIEGIMMIEGIMMIE." So clearly there's some overlap between people who like to read books about true love and happy endings and people who like to read books about New England women slicing the heads off eldritch horrors of the night. If you fall into the overlap category than this review is for you. 
 I liked Chapelwood, but not as much as Maplecroft. It should work as a stand-alone but you'll understand Lizzie's arc better if you read Mapelcroft first. I think my biggest problem was that Lizzie is very much a sidekick in this book up until the end when she takes a more central role. I loved having her around as an older woman, but she spends most of the book either away from the main action or assisting Wolf with his investigation. When she finally picks up an axe, it's awesome, but it's late in the game. That's unfortunate, because Lizzie is the most compelling character in a story in which most people more representations of ideas than they are fully realized characters (Ruth is the biggest exception here). 
 It took me a while to decide how I felt about the ending of this story, but I've settled on a guarded 'inspiring'. In any Lovecraft-style story, the hero cannot achieve total victory. There can't be a happy ever after. But there can be a happy-for-now, and a victory-for-now. It was nice to see the value of small, temporary victories celebrated. With it's all too timely message of fighting forces of ignorance and intolerance and hatred, Chapelwood may not have been the book I wanted, but I think it was the book I needed. And, as Inspector Wolf says, "Can one really ever get enough of axes?" 
 - Carrie S.