Review: The Foulest Things

Amy Tector’s The Honeybee Emeralds was one of my favourite books of 2022 (review here). So, it was with high expectations that I dove into The Foulest Things, the first book in a new series from Tector that featured a heroine working at the Dominion Archives. Mystery? Archives? I was super intrigued! Unfortunately, the book as a whole left me underwhelmed BUT I’m still really excited about book two, Speak for the Dead, which releases in March.

Here’s the book’s description:

Ottawa, January 2010. Canada’s historic Dominion Archives.
Junior archivist Jess Kendall is struggling to find her footing in her new role. Her colleagues undermine her, her boss hates her, and her only romantic prospect hides a whiskey bottle in his desk. Desperate to make a good impression, Jess’s prospects begin to change when she discovers a series of mysterious letters chronicling life in Paris at the start of the Great War. Thinking she has landed her ticket to career advancement, Jess dives into research in Dominion’s art vault, where she stumbles upon the body of one of her colleagues.
As if finding a corpse isn’t frightening enough, Jess soon notices she is being stalked by a menacing figure. It’s only when Jess makes the connection between the letters, the murder, and a priceless Rembrandt that she realizes just how high the stakes are. Can Jess salvage her career, unravel a World War I–era mystery, shake off her ominous stalker, solve a murder, and—oh yeah—save her own life before it’s too late?

One of my big issues was with Jess herself. I liked her, I really did. But I also thought she was an idiot. And idiots who go around trying to solve mysteries like Nancy Drew don’t sit well with me. She was young, I get that. But here’s the thing - I was close to, if not exactly, the same age she was in 2010 and some of her behaviour just didn’t make much sense. Your first grown up job out of university is a big deal. You don’t know how to act and you’re constantly trying to prove that you’re not a child and you do know your stuff. That, I understood. But some of the other things, which seem so small and minor that I can’t even remember specifics, left me wanting to shake Jess and tell her to use her big, beautiful brain because I knew she had one.

There were some storyline threads that only added to the clunky story (I glazed over any time the story mentioned her mom) and I really, really did not like the epilogue. I found myself getting confused sometimes - either by the storyline or the way the characters were acting. I could just see the glimmering nugget of the heart of the story, waiting to be let free, and I was sad it never really got to shine the way I thought it could.

The actual idea of this book? Oh, I was so in. I worked at a museum for a year and museums and archives have always been fascinating to me so I was really drawn to the fact that this book was set at the Dominion Archives in Ottawa. I liked that Jess was trying to track down items and find the truth of what really happened. I liked the history and mystery weaving together. That’s why I kept reading and why I’m still hopeful that book two will be better.

Clearly, The Foulest Things was not a winner from me. But I still plan to read Amy Tector’s next book in the Dominion Archives mystery series because I am still holding out hope that the brilliant idea she had will come through as an equally brilliant novel. Let’s keep those fingers crossed!

*An ARC of this novel was provided by the author in exchange for review consideration. All opinions are honest and my own.*