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Who doesn’t love a tarot card mystery? Or a shop filled with shiny crystals and little kits for manifesting luck, love, abundance,. Or an old, cold case of a missing teen girl from when our protagonist was in high school
Selling those kept the shop, and the eccentric Hannah Mystic, small town TV psychic, in groceries for most of her adult life. But none of those kits or crystals worked for the teenage Ginny, who disappeared 20 years ago this year. All that’s left of the very cold case are a few cryptic clues in Hannah's vision journals that didn’t leave the police anywhere useful.
Now Hannah‘s niece Drew is running the store, and her old high school, chemistry partner, now a hotshot - and simply hot - big city reporter, is back in her store and probing her hidden sore spots. A confirmed skeptic about psychic phenomena, he's digging up the old case for an anniversary revisit and he wants Hannah‘s old journals to see if he can make sense of the deceased psychic’s visions.
But Drew wants no part of raking up the past notoriety of her family and the shop. That someone vandalized her front window makes her think there’s more to this anniversary than meets the eye. What will the cards say? If Drew can bring herself to read them, that is. She has been hiding her psychic gifts ever since high school, rather than take on the notoriety or mockery or duration directed at her aunt.
Inserted throughout is tarot lore: mention of famous card sets and their designers, discussions of what each tarot could mean, mentions of how some religions view card reading and other spirituality tools as the devil’s work. I liked how the first reading Drew does is kind of a map to her opening dilemma and the journey ahead. I was tempted to bookmark that first reading so I could come back to check on progress. The tarot also opens moments of more serious acknowledgements - of loss and grief, of what we owe to those who have passed on.
Present are the usual cosy mystery collection of cutesy businesses and eccentric small town characters, some with secrets related to the old disappearance and some whose unrelated secrets are hindering the renewed investigation. There’s an old crush and sometimes-hookup whose slimy behaviour is brilliantly excoriated by both Drew and her friend Gigi. You will love to hate him too, even while he works his possibly fatal attraction on you. There is at least one chat message string in the missing girl's history that will chill any woman to the bone. In other words, a good diversity of flavourings around the main meat of the mystery.
It's been described as 'Veronica Mars meets Schitt's Creek', and while our protagonist is older than Veronica and the townsfolk not quite as zany as Moira Rose and her clueless cohort, there's definite resonance. Plus, for all the mystical trappings, this is a competently investigated mystery with compelling twists, and a strong resolution that resonates with our protagonist’s personal life as well.
#Netgalley #TheMysticAndTheMissingGirl #NewRelease #StMartinsMinotaur #Tarot #CardReadings #disappearance #unsolved #mystery #smalltown #crimefiction #cosycrime #HometownGirl #HighSchoolHottie #psychometry #prediction #visions #police #corruption #friendship #frenemy
Selling those kept the shop, and the eccentric Hannah Mystic, small town TV psychic, in groceries for most of her adult life. But none of those kits or crystals worked for the teenage Ginny, who disappeared 20 years ago this year. All that’s left of the very cold case are a few cryptic clues in Hannah's vision journals that didn’t leave the police anywhere useful.
Now Hannah‘s niece Drew is running the store, and her old high school, chemistry partner, now a hotshot - and simply hot - big city reporter, is back in her store and probing her hidden sore spots. A confirmed skeptic about psychic phenomena, he's digging up the old case for an anniversary revisit and he wants Hannah‘s old journals to see if he can make sense of the deceased psychic’s visions.
But Drew wants no part of raking up the past notoriety of her family and the shop. That someone vandalized her front window makes her think there’s more to this anniversary than meets the eye. What will the cards say? If Drew can bring herself to read them, that is. She has been hiding her psychic gifts ever since high school, rather than take on the notoriety or mockery or duration directed at her aunt.
Inserted throughout is tarot lore: mention of famous card sets and their designers, discussions of what each tarot could mean, mentions of how some religions view card reading and other spirituality tools as the devil’s work. I liked how the first reading Drew does is kind of a map to her opening dilemma and the journey ahead. I was tempted to bookmark that first reading so I could come back to check on progress. The tarot also opens moments of more serious acknowledgements - of loss and grief, of what we owe to those who have passed on.
Present are the usual cosy mystery collection of cutesy businesses and eccentric small town characters, some with secrets related to the old disappearance and some whose unrelated secrets are hindering the renewed investigation. There’s an old crush and sometimes-hookup whose slimy behaviour is brilliantly excoriated by both Drew and her friend Gigi. You will love to hate him too, even while he works his possibly fatal attraction on you. There is at least one chat message string in the missing girl's history that will chill any woman to the bone. In other words, a good diversity of flavourings around the main meat of the mystery.
It's been described as 'Veronica Mars meets Schitt's Creek', and while our protagonist is older than Veronica and the townsfolk not quite as zany as Moira Rose and her clueless cohort, there's definite resonance. Plus, for all the mystical trappings, this is a competently investigated mystery with compelling twists, and a strong resolution that resonates with our protagonist’s personal life as well.
#Netgalley #TheMysticAndTheMissingGirl #NewRelease #StMartinsMinotaur #Tarot #CardReadings #disappearance #unsolved #mystery #smalltown #crimefiction #cosycrime #HometownGirl #HighSchoolHottie #psychometry #prediction #visions #police #corruption #friendship #frenemy
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