Sorry, I DNF'd this one. I quite enjoyed the first in the series, but Rosie became completely insufferable in this one. I don't want to read about a woman who can't shut up about how cute a boy is and dislikes other women purely based on how much more attractive they are than her. I read my trashy YA fiction for that. I expect more from my adult protagonists.

Thank you to the publishers and net galley for the advanced copy in return for an honest review.

This book follows on from the events of the first book in the series, which I would recommend reading before starting this book.

The series focuses on Rosie Strange and Sam Stone. Rosie has inherited the Essex Witch Museum from her estranged Grandfather, and, as in the first book, it seems that there are secrets to uncover relating to her family and the museum.

The pair are employed by Ray Boundersby to investigate the reported haunting at his restaurant and the violent death of one of his employees that the police are pinning on his daughter Mary. Once again the author has researched a real life villain from the past and weaved her life into the story.

There are unexplained spooky happenings and some genuinely vile characters encountered as the story progresses. The frisson between Rosie and Sam is great and their relationship slowly develops. They work well together and Rosie's slightly annoying habits are tempered by Sam and vice versa.

A really enjoyable quick read, perfect for this time of year and I'll be waiting for the next book in the series.

This is the second in Syd's new series about "witches, magic and Essex Girls". My review of the first, Strange Magic, is here and a piece she kindly wrote for the blog, about Essex Girls and Essex witches, is here.

Another adventure for museum owner and Benefit Fraud investigator Rosie Strange and her curator and sidekick, Sam Stone. Barely having drawn breath from the events of Strange Magic, they're contacted by erstwhile hardman Ray Boundersby who's having a spot of bother at his restaurant.

Psychic bother.

Ray's not a man you say no to - at least, not if you're fond of your kneecaps - so Rosie and Sam pack up their (well, his) spookhunting equipment, leave the Essex Witch Museum, and begin to ask questions. Of course, by the time they do this we know - from the rather gripping prologue - that there is rather more than a few ghostly knockings in play here. Murder has been committed, murder of a specially gruesome kind, and Ray's daughter Mary is in the frame...

Moore's pair of investigators - not, please, "ghostbusters" as they keep telling everyone - are well placed here, in pursuing their own enquiries, to also unravel the murder mystery - a perennial difficulty for modern-day amateur and private investigators in crime stories. And make no mistake, this is a crime story - whether or not the perpetrator turns out to be living flesh and blood. But it has other aspects too, of course and indeed one of the things I enjoyed about this book was the sharp way that the investigation bobs to and fro between criminal and psychical investigations, with information often relevant to both sides.

Another was the personalities of Moore's two main characters. I have to be honest and say they might not appeal to everyone - neither is exactly likeable: Strange is, well, a strange combination: excellent good at reading others (except for Stone) and ultra confident, but often almost clunkingly un self-aware. As a result her narration is very funny at times, but you might well not warm to her (I did!)

Stone is more enigmatic, but then we don't get his viewpoint, only Strange's perception and this is - I think - distorted by the fact that she fancies him but doesn't ever quite come out and admit to herself. Yes, I think I see where this going but I hope Moore keeps them apart for a few more books because it's more fun that way.

The story takes Strange and Stone out of Essex into London, where the restaurant "La Fleur" stands, just off Fetter lane, north of Fleet Street. (Weirdly I was walking past that corner only yesterday). The spooky goings on require them to delve into the nastier side of London't past and, indeed, present. While that was very interesting I felt the book slightly lost its distinctiveness there - a LOT of UF has been written in the vein of "London's past comes back to haunt us" and one of the things I liked about Strange Magic was that it wasn't drawing on London.

Nevertheless, Moore does an excellent job here of highlighting a real historical scandal with echoes in the present day and this also means the story is a bit more grounded than Strange Magic was so I think the visit to London pays off - I just hope our heroes are back in Essex soon. I think they will be, because alongside the main plot, Rosie's been learning more about her family background and that, also, screams MYSTERY in 36pt flashing neon gothic. So while there was perhaps less in this book concerning the Museum, and Essex, we have some pointers that more is to be learned about both.

Overall, then, a good followup to the earlier book, keeping things moving nicely, baffling the reader as to just how much of what's going is supernatural, and setting up an intriguing mystery for the future. Not all the loose ends from the crime were tied up (why the flour?) but I can live with that as long as I've got plenty of Rosie and Sam to distract me.

The story follows Rosie, a 30 something Essex girl, who although a sceptic finds herself inheriting a witch museum and reluctantly gets roped into solving a paranormal mystery with the current curator; Sam Stone.
Yes I will admit that Rosie is a ‘challenging’ character to say the least. I disliked her more as the book went on and for me it did detract slightly from the storyline.
The most likeable part of the book was the investigating duo and their relationship. I loved the chemistry between the two and found myself laughing out loud in a few parts. If you can get past Rosie’s sassiness the book was a cute paranormal mystery and made for a great palette cleanser between heavy reads.
SIDE NOTE: this is book 2 in The Essex Witches series, having not read the first one didn’t affect my reading of the second in anyway.

I'm sorry but I hated this book.

Characters -- The protagonist, Rosie, is completely insufferable. She’s disrespectful, ungrateful, overly familiar, not funny and with low intelligence, which seemed intentional so she’d be more relatable to the readers. Her opinions were so disagreeable to me that I hated reading from her point of view and found it a shame the book was written in first person.

Rosie several times called police and wrongly informed them of a bomb, just to get them to turn up quicker and barely got reprimanded over it, let alone fired from her job or arrested. She gets deliberately offended by things that aren’t offended, picks fights for no reason, hates females just because her love interest shows them attention and at the same time entertains the idea of a relationship with someone else. And I’m supposed to take this woman-child seriously. I out loud said to the narrator ‘Shut up,’ at least once every single page. That’s how much she got on my nerves.

The secondary male character, Sam, was described to be in his early-mid 30’s, physically appeared as a Jonas brother and spoke like an eighteenth century English professor. So it’s pretty obvious how little I was invested in him. Here’s a quote from Sam who is talking casually to his friend: “It still flourishes where it can. A strange dirty nick in the human character, unchanged by either evolution or prosperity. One can only wonder why that is. But such questions we may put aside for now. We have a case to hand, to which this is of great and pressing relevance.” – Again, this is a man in his early-mid 30’s, in 2017, who is talking casually to his friend.

I forgot the names of most of the minor characters and couldn’t be bothered to keep going back to remind myself but none of them had any personality or distinguishing features so I wasn’t missing much. Half of the characters could have been removed from the book without impact to the plot, they were clearly only there to pad it out. The only characters who stood out, did so because they were caricatures.

Plot -- The plot was slow, very basic, simplistic and yet not at all believable. I can’t go into spoiler territory and explain why but I can say that it included a half-assed love triangle, a main plot that was resolved in a ridiculous and convenient manner and 2 sub-plots that were started, not developed since they started and then left wide open at the end of the book. The one tiny plot twist was glaringly obvious when it was being set up.

The filler was the most infuriating part about the book. If the filler was removed, there would have been more than enough room for both sub-plots to be developed and concluded but instead I was forced to read endless pointless rubbish like:

‘I heard him tut and imagined him shaking his head.’

“You were snoring,” said a voice opposite. It was Charlie, my junior; who was a few years older than me. He wanted my job. “Loudly,” he sniggered and smoothed his tie down over his shirt. It was navy with little anchors on it. His wife had bought it for him. She thought it was jaunty. It wasn’t jaunty. It was stupid.’ – Needless to say, Charlie and his wife are completely irrelevant to the story and neither are mentioned ever again. Why was I subjected to reading about his tie and his wife’s opinion on said tie? Why?

‘I’d met Doctor Roberts several times before and she had always come across as a very erudite and helpful ophthalmic consultant. She was a bit older than me and had what I thought of as a very self-possessed chin.’ – Again, this woman barely almost no relevance to the plot and is never heard from again. Why therefore, do I need to know she’s a bit older than the protagonist and has a self-possessed chin, whatever the Hell that means?

‘I should check what I’d written down as Mary’s description. “Can you pass over my notebook please, Sam? I want to have a look at something.” It was on the coffee table next to my dirty plate. I flipped through the pages.’ – Should have been edited to: ‘I flipped through the pages of my notebook to check what I’d written as Mary’s description.’ The notebook being on the coffee table isn’t relevant. Neither is the dirty plate. Neither is the fact Sam handed Rosie the notebook. I’m not being picky, this is one passage out of MANY that are just as pointless.

The filler gets even worse with nonsensical purple prose like this thrown in:

‘A kaleidoscope of feelings seemed to flicker across his face but I couldn’t tell what they were. The base note of it all was a sadness that radiated out of his body. I had felt it before, but couldn’t discern detail or understand where it came from. The texture was singular and unique.’ – Oh. I thought this wasn’t pretentious literary fiction but a mystery thriller.
From roughly halfway through the book, I skimmed everything that wasn’t dialogue just to stop my eyes rolling out of my head.

To replace the plot, there are regular massive info-dumps, some told as introspect by the narrator, but most told in dialogue by Sam who orates essays of intricately detailed exposition like he’s reading it straight from a book or newspaper, not as if he’s remembering it off the top of his head, as the reader is supposed to believe. This kind of unrealistic dialogue took me out of the story and made me laugh quite often.

Conflict -- I could not discern any real conflict.

Pacing -- The book started with a prologue and then a long and boring description of the interior décor of a building in the first chapter, which has no impact on the story at all. The book takes a long time to pick up pace and barely ever does, after the interesting prologue. There’s no suspense built because of the stupid, sarcastic asides by the increasingly irritating narrator which ruins any tension that might have been built otherwise. By the time anything potentially interesting starts to happen, it feels like it just came out of nowhere with no build up, so I can’t invest any concern for the outcome and the scene is wasted.

Writing -- There were quite a few words missing or repeated in sentences. There are many overly long sentences packed with filler, useless information and annoying and pointless introspect. I don’t know if the book was professionally edited but there were a lot of spelling and grammatical errors. Aside from the spelling and grammatical errors, the writing was just bad:

‘I darted a glance at the bar and noted that MT was watching us. But then Agatha came in with a bunch of clean glasses and said something and she turned round to speak to her.’

‘As he got closer I was unable to contain myself and the words “Oh my god oh my god oh my god” tumbled out of my mouth.’

‘He told me to take a chair, braying like a donkey.’

“He won’t be long now, Ms Strange, I’m sure,” she bleated apologetically.’

And this complete nonsense: “Hello?” It was Sam. “Rosie, can you meet me at La Fleur in 30 minutes, I’ve got some important news.” …Then, 30 minutes later at La Fleur, Sam’s first words are… “I don’t want to talk here, it’s not safe. Let’s go to the pub down the road.”

Narration -- The introspective language was overly simplistic, almost ‘oo-er, matron’ which turned the book from a thriller into bad chick-lit. The narration was incredibly condescending and spoke down to me to an insulting degree. An example of this is the quote directed at the reader:

‘Though I’m sure this is all a bit much to take on board. It was for me. So I’ll go back to the part where we were walking through the museum.’

On the same subject, the narrator broke the fourth wall multiple times to talk to the reader which took me out of the story and slowed down the already slow plot.

I wanted to DNF this book so many times and I would have, had I not got for free on netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to netgalley and the publisher.

DNF at 14%. I know it's early, but I didn't enjoy the characters, there are so many info dump regarding the scenery and what they do. Not enjoyable for me.

“Strange Sight” is the second instalment in Syd Moore’s projected “Essex Witch Museum” trilogy. I hadn’t read the first novel in the series (Strange Magic), but this did not detract from my enjoyment of this book, not least because as we go along the author deftly fills us newbies in with the facts we need to know. The back story can be briefly summed up. Rosie Strange unexpectedly inherits a “witch museum” set up by her grandfather Septimus, whom she hardly knew. Rosie is a down-to-earth, thirty-something “Essex girl” and scepticism runs in her blood (she’s a benefits fraud inspector, so one would hardly expect otherwise). She is bent on a quick sale of the museum, but finds herself oddly attracted to it. And to its resident curator, Sam Stone. She soon also becomes embroiled in enquiries of an otherworldly bent. In the case of “Strange Sight”, Strange and Stone are called to investigate ghostly manifestations in a high-end London restaurant, only to discover that the chef has been killed in a seemingly ritual murder. Very soon, the ghostbusters turn sleuths as they try to crack the link between this terrible crime and the ongoing hauntings.

Of course, crime and supernatural genres have been combined before. One thinks of William Hope Hodgson’s Carnacki series or, closer to us, John Connolly’s Charlie Parker novels. What I liked about Moore is that the supernatural aspect does not drown out the “crime novel” elements. Indeed, the mystery is well-plotted, satisfactorily concluded and could stand even without the otherwordly baggage. The ghostly sub-plots however add an element of frisson and there are hints that there is an overarching mystery directly involving Rosie Strange which will only be unravelled in the final book. What makes this novel a success however is the endearing investigative duo, and especially the funny, charismatic Rosie, who also doubles as narrator. Part Mulder and Scully, part Holmes and Watson, with some Bridget Jones thrown into the mix, it is the unlikely chemistry between the two which drives this book. That and the witty dialogue.

This is an entertaining novel, a perfect read for summer (or make that a spooky autumn afternoon), and one which I wouldn’t mind seeing adapted for the screen.

Excellent! Review is scheduled for publication date.