I knew the story of Lizzie Borden before reading this book, but I didn't know many of the intricacies surrounding the murders and the trial. If you're looking for a thorough answer -- did Lizzie kill her father and stepmother, or was she innocent? -- you won't get one here, but you'll definitely feel like you have enough information to judge for yourself.

There have been many books, articles and films about Lizzie Borden. Most of them lean toward the sensational. This book is very different. The author carefully lays out the facts as they were presented to the police and district attorney. This allows the reader to come to their own conclusion about Lizzie Borden’s guilt or innocence. The trial itself is laid out in exceptional detail.

Pictures are included to help the reader have a frame of reference when reading the account of this fascinating case. For those interested in Lizzie Borden, this is a must read. If you want actual facts, don’t pass this book up for a sensational account. Read what really happened.


I received an ARC from Simon & Shuster through NetGalley in exchange for an honest opinion. This in no way affects my opinion or rating of this book.

This book was such an interesting look into the story and legend surrounding Lizzie Borden. I’ve always been so intrigued by this crime and trial and this book was perfect for that!

If you are a fan of true crime novels then The Trial of Lizzie Borden should be your next read. I must say upfront that I was not a fan overall of this book and only gave it ⭐️⭐️. There were tons of details and it was told in a very methodical manner, two qualities which might be exactly what you are looking for, but for me did not equate to an enjoyable experience that I would suggest to everyone. I left the book still wondering whether there was sufficient evidence to convict Lizzie and if the jury got it wrong or right. It also made me think how far society has come in a short amount of time and yet how stuck in a rut we can remain.

Most people are familiar with the Lizzie Borden and I was one of them so when I heard about this book I was really excited to get my hands on it!

The Trial of Lizzie Borden by Cara Robetson tells the true story of one of the most famous murder trials in American history. I did find a lot of the information in the book I had already read about but I loved that Robertson examines all aspects of the case... and leaves it up to you as the reader to make up your own mind about Lizzie and her guilt or innocence.
My favorite part was all of the photographs the author added to the book. Overall I was impressed and recommend it if you love true stories!

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for giving me the opportunity to read and review this Ebook

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to read this book in return for my opinion.

What an interesting trip through one of the most fascinating trials in American history. I felt that the book was very balanced between the actual events and what the author feels happened. While there is no clear answer to who killed the Bordens, there is a ton of information about the trial.

I liked the history, the knowledge and all of the information provided. The coverage of the case is top notch.

“Oh, Mrs. Churchill, do come over. Someone has killed father.”

Lizzie Borden is the subject of one of America’s most enduring legends, and Robertson is a towering legal scholar, educated at Harvard and Oxford, and then at Stanford Law. She’s participated in an international tribunal dealing with war crimes, and has been researching the Borden case for twenty years. Here she lays it out for us, separating fact from innuendo, and known from unknown. My thanks go to Simon and Schuster and Net Galley for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

The Borden family lived in the heart of Fall River, and it consisted of Andrew, father of two grown but unmarried daughters Emma and Lizzie, still in residence, and his second wife, Abby. Their mother had died when Lizzie was tiny; Andrew had remarried a woman named Abby, whom Emma never accepted as a parent, but whom Lizzie called her mother until a short time before her grizzly death. Until this time the Borden household was well respected; Andrew was possibly the wealthiest individual in this Massachusetts town, but he was a tightfisted old scoundrel, and his refusal to relocate the family to the fashionable neighborhood on the hill where well-to-do citizens lived made his daughters bitter, as appropriate suitors would not call on them in their current home. Both had passed the age when respectable young women were expected to have married; they held that their father’s greed had ruined their chance at marriage and families of their own. Things had come to a head when Borden was persuaded to purchase the home in which Abby’s sister lived in order to prevent her from being cast out on the street. Emma and Lizzie were angry enough that they wouldn’t go downstairs when the parents were there, and poor Bridget, the servant, had to serve dinner twice to accommodate them. Everyone locked their bedroom doors against the others. Andrew had belatedly tried to smooth his stormy home life by purchasing a comparable house for each of his daughters, but the damage was done.

The story of Lizzie Borden is not a new one, but what sets Robertson’s telling apart from the rest—apart from the meticulous research and clarity of sourcing—is her explanation of how the cultural assumptions and expectations of 1893 New England differed from ours today, and how these nuances affected the trial. They lived in a time and place in which it was assumed that women were ruled far more by their hormones and ovulation than by intellect and reason. In fact:

“Experts like the influential Austrian criminal psychologist Hans Gross contended that menstruation lowered women’s resistance to forbidden impulses, opening the floodgates to a range of criminal behaviors…Menstruation may bring women to the most terrible crimes.”

Had Lizzie confessed to the killings, she might very well have been judged not guilty; her monthly cycle would have been said to have made her violent and there was nothing to be done about it, rather like a moose when rutting.

Criminal behavior was believed to be inherent in some people and not in others, and this counted in Lizzie’s favor. The Bordens were seen as a good family, and a girl from a good family doesn’t plot brutal murders. It isn’t in her. This sort of thing, experts said, was more likely to be done by a transient or a member of the working class. The women of Fall River were polarized around this case, and though women from comfortable homes were all certain that poor Lizzie was being railroaded, working class women weren’t as charitable in their assessments.

There was a ton of evidence against her, most of it circumstantial; the most damning aspects of the case against her were ruled inadmissible, and the jury never got to hear them.

Robertson is a fine storyteller, and her narrative lays it out for us so clearly. There is occasional gallows humor, as well as amusing bits of setting not seen in cities of any size today, such as the neighborhood cow that mooed near the courtroom window at inauspicious moments while testimony was being given. However, the first half of the book is more compelling than the second half, because prosecutors and attorneys must repeat things, sometimes many times and in many ways, in order to convince judges and juries, and since this book is about the trial, Robertson must do the same. Still it is fascinating to see how the whole trial shook out.

Those interested in the Borden case, or in true crime stories in general, should read this book. It’s the clearest, most complete recounting and analysis available to the public today, written by a legal scholar that has done the work and cut no corners. `

This book is fascinating. I have always wondered about the case of Lizzie Borden and the murders of her father and step-mother. The author did an incredible job piecing together loads of evidence, as well as the trial transcript. Due to the level of detail, reading this in eBook format was a bit challenging. I am interested in owning a hard copy so that it is easier to turn back and examine photos.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the complimentary eGalley. All opinions are my own.

I knew going in that a book entitled The Trial of Lizzie Borden was going to be about, you know, the trial of Lizzie Borden, but I had no idea that it would be so detailed. Not being a lawyer or particularly interested in legal minutiae I had to struggle to finish this book. Recommended only if you're a serious trial junkie or really love legal history.

I received a digital ARC from the publisher via Netgalley.

A very delayed review yes, but I found this to be a fantastic read. I love any and all historical novels, especially on lethal women such as Lizzie Borden. Cara Robertson did a wonderful job bringing the trial and Lizzie's world to life. I highly recommend this novel! I'll definitely re-read it this summer!

Everyone thinks they know all about Lizzie Borden, but Trial of Lizzie Borden delves into new area. Presenting the Borden family, and the view of women of the time, it is an interesting presentation of one of the biggest drama's of the 1800's. Did she or didn't she .... in reality only Lizzie knew and she never talked about that happened that famous day in the Borden house. This is a great read that should bring new readers to the perplexing question.

Fall River,Massachusetts 1892 it is a bustling town with the usual shops,churches and neighborly visits. Those who could afford it had servants and lived up on the hill. While the Borden family did have domestic help, an Irish woman named Bridget they did not live on the hill and Lizzie resented this. The household consisted on Andrew Borden,his second wife Abby Borden, his two spinster daughters Emma and Lizzie and the domestic help Bridget.
This is author Cara Robertson's first book and she does an excellent job of presenting facts after much careful research. I have read several books on this murder and this one has way more information available than the others. A good portion of the book covers the trial with dialogue I have not seen in previous books I read. We really get a sense of the time period through this book in the setting and mannerisms of the people interviewed.
This is one murder that fascinates us to this day even over one hundred years after the fact. Was Lizzie responsible for the murders? Read the book and make your mind up for yourself.
Great for lovers of crime fiction.
Pub Date 12 Mar 2019
I was given a copy of this from Simon & Schuster through NetGalley. Thank you. All opinions expressed are my own.

I did not love this books in fact I did not finish it. I read about half and then decided it was not the book for me.

The research and writing is very well done but it is very dry. I am interested in the Lizzie Borden case but this for people that are interested in knowing every detail.

Thank you for the opportunity to read this, it just was not for me.

The Trial of Lizzie Borden is exciting, near-mythical subject matter. The book got weighed down in minutiae that disrupted the narrative flow and made the book read more like a textbook than a thoughtful, well-researched study of one of the most written about and talked about trials of 19th century America.
Cara Robertson did a tremendous amount of research and provided excellent chapter notes. Her skill as an academic is clear. Her skill at weaving those facts into a compelling narrative fell short. I definitely learned a lot reading The Trial of Lizzie Borden, but I had to work really hard to do it.

Unfortunately, this book was a DNF for me. Robertson tells the infamous story of the Lizzie Borden trial through lots of highly research information. I commend the author for her meticulous attention to detail because that, in itself, is phenomenal. Due to this, the prose cam across as dry and I found it hard to stay focused on the plot. I am not normally a nonfiction reader, so I may have set myself up for failure on this one. However, I fully intend on listening to the audiobook of The Trial of Lizzie Borden once my library gets the book in stock. I love nonfiction in the form of audio, because it gives it so much more life and I think it would do this book much more justice.

This is a difficult book to review! On the one hand, it definitely gave more context to the trial, but on the other hand, I'm not entirely sure if the author actually likes her subject. I think the latter makes the book feel a bit dry, it's more of an analytical read than the emotionally charged one I was expecting. That being said, it appealed to my macabre as well as my historian side.
I would definitely recommend it to patrons at my library.

DNF at 37%.

If you're looking for a very thorough description of the Lizzie Borden trial, complete with details of just how hot it was in the courtroom, what she wore on each day, the headlines and gossip of the day, et cetera, then this book is for you. There are quotes upon quotes in addition to minute accounts of each witness's testimony, and this is a great resource regardless of how much you already know (or think you know) about the case.

Personally I found it a little too detailed and slightly repetitive, but this is just a case of right book, wrong reader.

Lizzie Borden has held a mythical position in America's cultural cannon ever since her arrest for the brutal murders of her father and step-mother first catapulted her into the national spotlight.

I wanted to love this book. I read a lot of true crime and I am familiar with the story of the Borden murders.

This book fell a little flat. It was descriptive to a fault of the various police, lawyers, judges, neighbors, and more which became tedious to sift through fairly quickly in.

3/5...I learned some new things about Lizzie Borden and the trial she underwent, but got lost in the details.

I was vaguely familiar with the Lizzie Borden case as most people are, but being a huge fan of true crime, I was very interested in this book. It focuses on the trial itself, and how we got there. The story is told in three parts - the first is the crime itself and how the prosecution built its case, the second is the trial itself and the verdict, and the third is a short wrap up of Lizzie's life post trial as well as current state of the case and related files. I thought this was an interesting take on the subject, given that there have been multiple books written on this already. My favorite part was the trial itself, because that is the part of this story that I know the least about. It was both fascinating and infuriating how the case was presented and arguments were made back then (aka, the argument that menstruation causes women to want to commit crimes, I mean really). It got a little technical in a few parts, which could be difficult to get through, but the author did a really good job of being thorough and piecing together a story that made you feel as if you were right there with everyone else. She also showed how the system was flawed way back then, potentially even worse as most of the trial was based on circumstantial evidence. The way Lizzie was able to change her story so many times, be so flippant during her interrogations, it was all so surreal. I enjoyed this read and feel much more educated about this case. I recommend this to those that like true crime, anything on this case, and reading stories about how the courts worked back then.

An amazing book!! I have always loved reading anything having to do with lizzie Borden and this book captured my attention 100% and i did not want to put it down! Very in depth and informative and I loved every single page!!