Spectacle

Rate: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Author: Jodie Lynn Zdrok

Published: February 12, 2019

Series: #1 in Spectacle

Thank you so much to Macmillan/Tor-Forge for giving me an ARC of Jodie Lynn Zdrok’s Spectacle via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Imagine yourself spending your summer visiting a morgue or an execution for fun. That’s what people of Paris in 1870s did, including our 16 year old journalist in the making Nathalie Baudin. Nathalie is a journalist that writes the morgue column for the summer. But Nathalie discovers that the murders on bodies in the morgue is closely linked to who she is and the secrets her family has long kept from her. Nathalie must do everything to discover the killer before she falls on the morgue herself.

I love Nathalie’s voice and the vivid, dream-like descriptions of how a 16 year old would live in the summer of 1870s in Paris. I did not expect it would turn to magic, but it’s one of the qualities I liked about this book. It feels like I’m in a maze and every turn keeps on surprising me. Unfortunately, this is also one of the qualities that kind of pushed me away. The maze did not make me feel, at most points in the book, thrilled. There were parts where I felt the thrill that I thought I would experience but most of it, it felt like reading a diary. It was not bland but it had too much information and dragged the book on the first twenty chapters.

I love the relationships between the characters and how it was woven wonderfully into the plot. I’m glad this book did not have a romantic relationship between Baudin and Gagnon (although it tried pairing them) and I wish it would stay platonic, like a brother-sister duo. It makes this book unique and the dynamic of their relationship is interesting to read.

Seeing as where it left off (with a lot of questions), there is a huge space for Nathalie’s next adventure. As it had established the relationships and secrets (so far), a next book would be interesting to read and see the journey the author will take us. I would recommend it to people expecting fantasy/historical fantasy and not mystery/thriller.