The first in Juliet Blackwell’s Witchcraft Mystery series, Secondhand Spirits reminded me a lot of a cluttered antique shop–appropriate since the main character runs a vintage clothing store in San Francisco. There were a few quality pieces, a couple of unexpected treasures, and a whole lot of random crap that it made it difficult to find what I was looking for. What’s it about? Lily Ivory (I just can’t with that name) is a powerful witch with a troubled and lonely past. After years of […]
Ashes to Ashes
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 […]