• Author: Rachel Hawkins, Ash Parsons and Vicky Alvear Shecter
• Series: Standalone
• Genre: Historical Fiction and Horror
• No. of pages: 198
• Dates read: 14.10.20 – 16.10.20
• Star Rating: 2 stars
• ARC published by Serial Box
• Challenge: ONTD

Plot: Beatrix Greene has made a name for herself in Victorian England as a reputable spiritual medium, but she’s a fraud: even she knows ghosts aren’t real. But when she’s offered a lucrative job by James Walker—a scientist notorious for discrediting pretenders like her—Beatrix takes the risk of a lifetime. If her séance at the infamously haunted Ashbury Manor fools him, she will finally have true financial freedom. If she fails, her secret will become her public shame.

First of all, thank you Netgalley and Spirit Books for a copy of this ARC in exchange for a honest review.

That being said, sadly this just didn’t work out for me.

First of all, I want to say that I enjoyed the plot of the story. I really liked where it went and how it ended but this was a book where there was so much potential it just wasn’t executed as well as I had hoped.

For starters, you have 3 authors working on this book yet you can’t differentiate them at all. It would have been nice if each author tackled a different point of view or time frame, this would had allowed each author to show off their talents, having them right similarly I felt really hindered the authors. It just read as if one person wrote it and I was expecting something more from 3 different authors.

The story while fast-paced it sadly felt rushed and we weren’t given enough time to get to know the characters so I ultimately didn’t connect to them or the story as a whole. I think this was due to the story just being way too short, nobody was given enough time to set up character or plot points. Everything then ended up becoming quite predictable.

There was one thing that I really didn’t like and that was the romance in it. This was a really random additions for me, it felt entirely misplaced and made no sense to the story. I would have preferred them to have been friends or a possible romance being hinted, at the very end of the story.

I would say though it was a quick easy read with a pretty good plot it just needed more development in pretty much all areas.

The next book I will be reviewing is The Black Prism by Brent Weeks. I am about halfway through, as I write this post, and I’m enjoying it so far.