Author: Teri Brown
Publisher: Harper Collins
Rating: WARTY!
The problem I had with this novel is that nothing happens in it. Nothing interesting, new, or different, anyway. It’s supposed to be a story about a mother-daughter team who have a magic/psychic show in the 1920's. The daughter, Anna van Housen, is the magician, and her rather abusive mother, Marguerite, is the fake psychic. While Anna is a capable magician (of the illusionist variety, not the really magical variety), her mother is an out-and-out fake, assisted by Anna in pulling the wool over people's eyes during their stage shows. The two of them are scam artists and conduct private seances which they use to criminally bilk the grieving out of money. Anna apparently sees nothing wrong in this.
For reasons unexplained, Marguerite treats Anna like dirt, employing her as a servant far more than she loves her as a daughter. Anna is rumored (by her mother) to be the daughter of Harry Houdini (although throughout, I suspected that this was a lie), who happens to be in New York at the same time as the van Housens. The non-twist here is that Anna actually can read minds and communicate with the dead.
In a mind-numbingly boring development, Anna acquires for herself two, and exactly two (no less, no more) men, a 'bad boy' and a 'good boy'. Yawn. The two are, for all practical purposes interchangeable, although the more serious of them, the 'good boy' who has the absurd name of Cole, is the one with this supposedly dark secret which turns out to be nothing. It became tedious beyond words to read how many times she looked into his dark eyes or had her heart skip a beat, and I habitually flipped off every single page upon which either of these two tired tropes put in an appearance, which may mean I missed a plot twist here and there, not that there was much plot; as I said, nothing happens in this novel. Oh, Anna does get kidnapped, but she's an escape artist and she almost immediately escapes. That's it for high adventure.
What about the writing? Well, it wasn't badly written in a technical sense, but I felt no compulsion driving me to read this. When I had to put it down for whatever reason, I had no thoughts along the lines of "when will I be able to get back to it?". I did not miss it when I wasn't reading it; that's how I know how thoroughly unappealing it was. Here's one line which I thought utterly absurd: It's pure magic to see the sun go down in the west..."??! Because normally, of course, it goes down in the east. Seriously, I can see what the author was attempting here, but it was written badly. She should have written, "It's pure magic to see the sun set as the city lights come on...", but she didn’t. Here's another classic when Anna is tied up: "I might be able to release myself, but in the condition I'm in, it would take far too much effort and leave me unable to defend myself..." Seriously? She can defend herself better tied-up than with hands free? Wow!
In short, I honestly cannot recommend this novel, and I certainly won't dishonestly recommend it.
