Witches of Vegas

                    

I have a confession to make, I'm a shitty British person. This may come as a shock to everyone I've encountered whilst living in Canada, but I Jessica Howard, a fully-fledged member of the Queen's England, have never seen, or read, Harry Potter. 

I have spent a lot of time in the Harry Potter shop in Kings Cross Station, but that's because I spend half my life there and it's a good place to browse while I'm waiting for the queue to the loo to go down. 

This lack of knowledge reared its head when I began reviewing the latest novel sent to me, The Witches of Vegas by Mark Rosendorf. The novel centers around a family of witches that use their power to perform a magic show in Las Vegas. Struggling to compete with the supernatural, the owner of a neighboring show agrees to spy them for a woman that turns out to have ties with the family. 

The woman who hires them turns out to be a witch herself, as well a vampire. Having been turned by the family's token blood-sucking relative, she seemingly went rogue and was banished by her former lover. 

Quite a straight forward plot you would say, Straddling the line between reality and the supernatural, but pretty easy to follow. 

Oh, how wrong you would be. 

You see, whilst a good book, there is a lot going on within this text. We have reality, we have witches, we have vampires. We have time travel, exorcism, abuse, death, portals, illusions, channeling the earth's energy, and the use of crystals. Quite simply there is far too much going on within the novel. For me, at least, there was little chance of escapism and relaxation given that every 3 pages seemed to lead into a new trope that could have been the focus of a novel in its own right. 

Don't get me wrong, it's a well-written book. The characters are well developed, the description was great and it was fun to read about a topic that I'd never really explored before. Maybe that was the issue, maybe it was owing to the fact that I have little experience reading about the topic that I found it hard to enjoy. Regardless, whilst it may be a good choice for people who enjoy books about magic and the language itself was easy to read, I don't think it's something I will be picking up again. 

xXx

Dead after Midnight

As I'm sure a lot of people did, I read a lot of books during the monstrosity that was quarantine 2020. As I prefer to find books to read by browsing bookstores so I can flick through pages and read blurbs, an activity I was obviously prohibited from doing during lockdown, I chose to read a lot of books for review posts. Mostly because having someone else choose what I should read next is significantly easier than trying to decide myself and, let's face it, I did not really have the mental capacity to make choices other than what episode of Miss Marple to watch each day between the months of April and June. 

One of the books that I read was called Dead after Midnight, by C. P. Daly. Admittedly a bit of a downer, the text had a potentially interesting storyline as it centered around the actions of a woman who was working as a prostitute in a prison after finding her "co-worker" dead. 

As I said, a bit of a downer and quite a dark subject matter. Definitely not one for those looking to pass their time during the remaining days of summer mulling over a relaxing beach read. 

The text itself is really good, and it follows the protagonist as she attempts to flee her old life and create a new identity in another state. However, as with so many stories of this kind, the people and situations she was trying to run away from end up finding her, and she must do whatever she can to keep herself safe. 

There are a couple of twists in the text that I did not quite expect, the true identity of her murdered co-worker being one of them. However, as with so many of the books I read and review for these types of posts, there just wasn't enough substance for me to truly unpack and enjoy these surprises. The book is very short, and a lot more could have been said about this and many other aspects of the novel that would have allowed me to engage with it further. 

Whilst it would have been nice to know more about the protagonist for instance, why she became a prostitute in the first place, it was nice to read a text where a female character working in the profession was able to leave it behind and find something new. So many novels featuring these types of tropes depict women as being stuck in situations such as these with no chance of ever escaping. 

In short, I really enjoyed the text. Whilst I believe that some parts of it served no purpose and therefore could have been removed, her sleeping with her boss's engaged son, for instance, it was very enjoyable and had the potential to be an even better text. All I wish was that it had been a bit longer to allow me to find out more about the characters. 

xXx