The Other Typist by Suzanne Rindell

Rose Baker is a plain, uninteresting, naive typist who lives in New York City in the 1920s. An orphan with few friends, Rose learns to focus on her skills and doesn’t care much about being liked by those in her school or her office.

From the beginning of Rose’s narrative, she hints that bad things are going to happen. Eventually, she reveals that she’s writing from an asylum under the supervision of a psychiatrist. This fact alone keeps readers interested. You know the train is going to wreck, you just don’t know exactly how.

Rose’s issues start when she meets Odalie, the polar opposite of Rose. Odalie is attractive, cunning, worldly and manipulative. Rose develops an obsession with Odalie because she shows an interest in Rose and develops a friendship with her. Odalie leads Rose further and further into her life of underground crime, speakeasies and other shady activities.

As the story unfolds, Rose shows how she fell under Odalie’s spell, how it led her to compromise her morals and how she was framed for a crime she didn’t commit.

The story is moderately interesting, but the characters seem unbelievable and unlikable. They don’t have significant depth and aren’t developed as the story progresses.

Finished: January 19, 2015
Rating: 2 out of 5