🎙️ The Books Insider Recap – After Alice Fell by Kim Taylor Blakemore
A sister’s grief. A town’s silence. A truth buried deeper than the grave.
Hey friends,
This week on The Books Insider, we wandered into the fog-draped alleys of 1865 New Hampshire to talk about After Alice Fell — and let me just say: this episode wasn’t just about mystery, it was about mourning. About what it feels like to chase the truth when everyone around you is desperate to bury it.
Kim Taylor Blakemore’s writing is haunting, intimate, and incredibly cinematic. We felt the cold air, the tension in every glance, and that creeping sense of something’s not right. And in this episode, we unpacked the heart of it all: sisterhood, madness, and the stories people hide when society demands silence.
🕯️ Marion: The Woman Who Wouldn’t Let Go
We talked a lot about Marion — Alice’s sister — and how she returns home to find that Alice has supposedly jumped from the roof of an asylum. But Marion doesn’t buy it. And neither did we.
Her grief is so raw, so fierce, that it turns into fuel. She becomes this determined, emotionally unsteady force — part detective, part grieving sister. During the episode, we explored how Marion’s obsession with the truth walks a fine line between justice and self-destruction.
She isn’t a “perfect” heroine. She’s sharp-tongued, persistent, and emotionally frayed. But she’s real. And that made her journey all the more compelling.
🖤 A Town Full of Secrets
One thing we all noticed — and talked about at length — was the setting. This isn’t just a backdrop. The town itself feels like a character. Small. Closed off. Gossipy. The kind of place where women are expected to be quiet, polite, and obedient.
Marion, of course, is none of those things.
And the more she pushes, the more resistance she meets. From doctors. From family. Even from those who claim to want the truth. We got deep into how the novel critiques how women were institutionalized — not just physically, but emotionally. How grief, anger, or even defiance could be labeled as “hysteria.”
One listener said in the comments:
“It reminded me of how often women were treated like they were crazy just for feeling too much.”
And we couldn’t agree more.
🧩 Themes We Dug Into
Grief as a driving force: How mourning someone can become its own kind of obsession.
Institutional violence: The asylum wasn’t just a building — it was a mirror of how society deals with difficult women.
The fragility of reputation: We talked about how so much of the suspense rests on the fear of shame. Not guilt — shame.
Final Thoughts from the Pod
After Alice Fell isn’t just a mystery. It’s a ghost story — not with literal spirits, but with the kind that linger in memory, in silence, in half-told truths.
If you’ve ever felt the ache of unanswered questions after losing someone, or if you love stories where atmosphere is everything, this episode will stay with you. It’s for the readers who don’t mind walking through the dark to find the light — even if it flickers.
Listen to the full episode wherever you get your podcasts, and bring a blanket — it gets chilly in the shadows.
Until next time,
Keep asking the hard questions.