If Texas Gothic is Scooby-Doo meets Nancy Drew, then the companion novel, Spirit and Dust (Ember, 2013), is Harry Dresden: Girl Detective. As I was reading this YA paranormal romance, I began to realize that it was really similar to Dresden Files #3, Grave Peril. Like, really similar. Like, “let’s weaponize the spirits of the dead in Chicago and then unleash Sue the T. Rex during the book’s climax” similar. (This is not a spoiler; like Chekhov’s gun, if you introduce a dinosaur skeleton in […]
Scooby-Doo Meets Nancy Drew
Texas Gothic by Rosemary Clement-Moore (Ember, 2011) reads like something written by Zane Grey after an all-night peyote bender and Veronica Mars marathon. It mashes up tropes from a half-dozen different genres–the plucky girl detective, the hot cowboy, the lost Spanish goldmine, the restless ghost–and gently pokes fun at itself for doing so. In another writer’s hands, the book could have been a disjointed mess, but Clement-Moore’s breezy, self-aware style manages to pull it all together into a mostly enjoyable read. What’s it about? During […]
Roaring 20’s urban fantasy
The first two (and the only ones so far published) books in the Diviners series are genre-bending, spooky young adult mysteries with tons of characters in intersecting stories, all set during the roaring twenties and featuring tons of historical flourishes. I am incredibly lazy and struggling to write reviews right now, so I’m leaning on Goodreads for these plot descriptions: The Diviners (3.5 stars) — “Evie O’Neill has been exiled from her boring old hometown and shipped off to the bustling streets of New York […]
Short Yet…Underwhelming
The unnamed narrator of this novella is a small time con artist who specializes in aura reading and sensual massage at Spiritual Palms. When Susan Burke hires her to cleanse her Victorian home of negative energy, which she believes is driving her teenage stepson Miles to violence against his new baby brother, our protagonist sees it as a way to make an easy buck and potentially gain some new clients. But after several harrowing experiences in the Burke home, the psychic realizes that she might […]
Ghosts of War
This review is for the audiobook version of The Other Side Of Midnight, by Simone St James. This might just be St. James’s best work so far! In 1920s London, psychic Ellie Winter, daughter of the famed Fantastique, is asked to help a mysterious government agent find his sister’s ghost. Gloria Sutter used to be Ellie’s best friend, until her scheming brought ruin to the Fantastique. The New Society was trying to bring legitimacy to psychic phenomenon, but their testing proved Ellie’s mother a fraud, […]
More Like This, Please
This review is for the audiobook version of Bristol House, by Beverly Swerling. This book is practically Sarah bait. History, adventure, ghosts, and a little romance, what more could I want? The story follows Annie Kendall, Tudor historian specializing in religious symbols on doors, as she begins a new research project in London. Annie is a recovering alcoholic trying to rebuild her academic career and has been given a fantastic opportunity to research Jews in the Tudor era, and is set up in an […]
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