Sep 23, 2010

Review--Secondhand Spirits by Juliet Blackwell (Book 10 in Reading Challenge)

LILY IVORY IS NOT YOUR AVERAGE WITCH. HER SPELL-CASTING POWERS TEND TO DRAW MISCHIEVOUS SPIRITS WHILE KEEPING NORMAL HUMANS AT A DISTANCE. BUT NOW HER VINTAGE STORE COULD GIVE HER A CHANCE TO MAKE FRIENDS IN SAN FRANCISCO.

Lily hopes for a normal life when she opens Aunt Cora's Closet. With her magical knack for vintage fashion--she can sense vibrations of the past from clothing and jewelry--her store becomes a big hit.

But when a client is murdered and children start disappearing from the Bay Area, Lily may be the only one who can unravel the crime. She tries to keep her identity a secret while investigating, but it's not easy--especially under the spells of sexy "myth buster" Max Carmichael and powerful witch Aidan Rhodes. Will Lily's witchy ways be forced out of the closet?

Juliet Blackwell's Secondhand Spirits is truly a must read! If you like mystery with your paranormal or like Victoria Laurie's series, then this is a must read for you! It has just enough balance of mystery and paranormal to be a fast read! I devoured this in almost 1 day, had to read the last 40ish pages this morning.

It begins with a nice intro with the characters and the mystery of Aidan Rhodes, the male witch and there is a a different use in terminology here with witches, warlocks and the like, but Blackwell explains them all easily and entwines the meaning nicely into the flow of the story.

And what a mystery it was. We know what the mystery will be based on the BOC, but we don't know when it all starts, and when it does, WOW! There is definitely an element of danger involved as well, because the murder mystery also involves witchcraft and a very old legend that rings of The Lady or Woman in White. But it is a Spanish version of the story and it's not just a legend!

Lily digs deeper into the mystery, determined to find the missing child who she had seen just before she vanished. And there are quite a few suspects and I was way off on one, but then I remember my "rule" to mysteries, which I can't repeat for spoiler purposes, and sure enough that rule rang true!

There was romance involved as well, yet again we find ourselves a sort of love triangle, but not exactly. There is one main love interest, won't tell which of the two men it is from the BOC and the other just doesn't feel like a love interest to me just yet.

I love a good mystery now and then, but I am picky when it comes to mysteries. I am too much of a supernatural girl to read anything that doesn't really contain the supernatural in some way. Hence my love of Victoria Laurie's mysteries, The Psychic Eye and The Ghost Hunter mysteries, both fabulous series if you like the blend of paranormal and mystery as I do!

Overall I give the book 5/5 stars! A GREAT read!! I will definitely be adding the second book to the series, A Cast Off Coven, to my To Buy List!

This was my 10th book in the September Spectacular Reading Challenge! I DOUBLE the number! Now let's see how far I can get!

No comments:

Post a Comment

Comments are an award all on their own! So my blog is an award free one! Thanks for any consideration though!