★★★★☆ 4 out of 5

Sex, prostitutes, brothels, women with a past, murder.

Did I catch your attention yet? Good, because you need to read this book.

I am a firm believer that if someone says they hate a certain subject it is because our rigidly structured school system is the cause. Reading, history, science, math…school has caused us to avoid these subjects like the plague. We should not let school be our decision factor, especially when it comes to reading because those stuffy history books we were forced to read. Those do not count as real reading. Books like Karen Abbott’s Sin in the Second City should be what we base real reading off of because the writing is enticing, the subject is risqué, and you will end up questioning all of your morals by the end of the book. Has a high school history class made you feel like that? Probably not.

I am the first to admit that non-fiction novels can be dry and tedious to read. Some authors need to understand that just because it is fact does not mean readers want to read a text book. A lot of non-fiction authors are realizing it and adding more spice to their novels. Sin in the Second City pulls readers in with its unusual link between the police, ministers protesting for “clean women”, and the infamous Everleigh sisters who ran the most famous brothel in American history. It is a weird group to write about in one book. Even I had my doubts when an old high school teacher recommended it to me, but the weirdest groupings make some of the best stories and Sin in the Second City is one of those stories.

Set in early 1900s Chicago, Sin in the Second City starts off with Minna and Ada Everleigh rolling their eyes at all the haters in the streets and laughing at how ridiculous the law and their neighbors were being about their brothel. Everyone who wasn’t somehow involved in the mysterious Everleigh sisters’ brothel hated them because they made something the law frowned upon classy and highlighted how terrible nearby brothels were.

If you were a prostitute, you wanted to be a “butterfly” working for the Everleigh sisters because their women were treated like movie stars instead of objects. With a whole chapter dedicated to the shenanigans the “butterflies” got into behind closed doors, any reader curious about Victorian sexual escapades will enjoy.

But the thing I loved most about this book was that it will make you hate the police. Abbott’s writing on the Everleigh sisters will make you so sympathetic to these women who are trying to better a tarnished industry that when law enforcement try to prohibit their brothels in fear they are involved in the horrors of “white slave trafficking” you will want to throw your book and morals out the window a-la Silver Lining’s Playbook style.

Abbott’s writing is so good that it is easy to forget that you are reading a piece of non-fiction. See, history can be fun!

Interested in other books written by Karen Abbott? Check out: American Rose: A Nation Laid Bare: The Life and Times of Gypsy Rose Lee and Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War.