Secondhand Spirits: A Witchcraft Mystery (Witchcraft Mystery, #1)

by Juliet Blackwell

Love the vintage- not the ghosts

Lily Ivory feels that she can finally fit in somewhere and conceal her "witchiness" in San Francisco. It's there that she opens her vintage clothing shop, outfitting customers both spiritually and stylistically.

Just when things seem normal, a client is murdered and children start disappearing from the Bay Area. Lily has a good idea that some bad phantoms are behind it. Can she keep her identity secret, or will her witchy ways be forced out of the closet as she attempts to stop the phantom?

• ISBN10: 045122745X
• ISBN13: 9780451227454
• Publish Date: 7 July 2009
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Penguin Books Australia
• Imprint: Signet
• Format: Paperback (US Mass Market)
• Pages: 336
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780451227454

Reviews

[Baroness Book Trove]

CAUTION! IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THIS BOOK YET. CONTINUE AT YOUR OWN RISK! THIS REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS!!!

Hello my fellow readers! Baroness Karen here for another book review. This one was sooo good. Even if I had to stop it to work on this blog and had to reread it from the beginning to the point I was at. Anyways off to the book review.
I love everything about this book. Especially since it combines Supernatural, Mystery, and Romance altogether. This book was a good one. Granted I didn't think it would be but it turned out to be good. The reason I didn't think it would be was all because my mom bought the book at a airport and we all know that sometimes books that come from there are not always good ones. But oh well.

Anyways this book follows the daily life of Lily Ivory. It was quite amazing to see and read about it since mostly I didn't think much about some of the stuff. Granted there is some Spanish in the book but Miss Blackwell is always able to make sure that you know what that one person said in the next sentence or two. I mean I took a Spanish class in high school and I didn't really think much when our Spanish teacher told us a little bit about La Llorona. Then in this book when I read that she was in there I was a little bit spooked and felt sorry for all of the kids.

All throughout the book I thought that I knew who was the killer but I was seriously wrong. I even felt sorry for Mrs. Potts only living daughter, Mrs. Potts was the client mentioned in the plot, with what her mother did to her. But then at the end of the book I understood with why and I think the daughter did too. And yes I know that this book is fiction but sometimes I think that the characters are real. Anyways this book is a really good and it will keep you guessing. Or at least it did with me. I am giving this book five stars.

To read my other reviews please go to my site: http://baronessbooktrove.blogspot.com/

[MurderByDeath]

I've read, reviewed and I own all the books in this series, but I had heard somewhere in one of my groups that the narration for these books was particularly well done and since I'm always looking for something to listen to (my drives are not short ones) I decided to give the first book in the series a try.  Which led me to immediately purchasing every book in the series on audio.  At full price.    

 Xe Sands is brilliant.  Absolutely freaking brilliant at narration.  I've heard some really well narrated books previously, but she's ruined them all for me.  Everyone else now sounds like Clint Eastwood in drag.  By this I do not mean to infer that narrators everywhere have OD'd on testosterone supplements, but so many of them now sound to me as though they are mimicking his style of talking.  I don't know how to explain it beyond that.  Choppy, overly grave, um... yeah, let's go with choppy.   

Xe narrates these books just the way you'd imagine real people talking.  She's not reading a book to you, she's living the story as she speaks it.  Lily could be sitting next to me in the car telling me all about her latest adventures and it would sound exactly the same way (plus, she could totally use her magic to fix the damn traffic!).   Male voices are done without the male characters sounding like they'd just been kicked and she's really adept at making one male character sound different from the next.  In fact her overall range of voice characterisations is quite broad.    Happy trails!