Katie True works as a clerk in a shopping mall to pay the bills, but her real talent is fortune telling, which she dabbles in part time. She has a knack for getting people to unwittingly divulge details about themselves that she can then spin into Tarot card fortune telling magic. Sounds fun, right? But things get serious when one particularly distraught client briefly leaves his phone unguarded. Sneaking a peek for information, Katie discovers a photo of a murder scene inside. What’s worse, she knows the victim. With no evidence of a crime, beyond an image she wasn’t supposed to see, the police are slow to react. Undaunted, Katie takes matters into her own hands, and Tarot cards, and launches her own perilous investigation. As the intricate plot unfolds the suspense ratchets up, and the stakes get ever higher for Katie. Chern leaves lots of clues and breadcrumbs along the way, guiding the reader along to the jaw-dropping conclusion. This is a crisply written, clever, fast-paced, and fun whodunit. Welcome to Tarot Card Reading 101.

I really wanted to enjoy this book much more than I actually did. The cover and description are great but I was never hooked. Everything just fell flat and the main character’s immaturity kept taking me out of it. I expected the tarot aspect to be incorporated more but again, everything I wanted to love about this book just wasn’t executed well.

Thank you Net Galley for the advanced copy. I might try reading again once it’s officially released.

Katie is a tarot card reader who works in a mall with her friend Marley. She is giving a reading to a customer and goes through his phone as he goes to the restroom. She finds a photo of her friend Marley dead. She goes to the police and a cop named Jamie helps her investigate. They uncover secrets and lies. This book was a thrilling read. Thanks NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group-Ballantine! This will be released March 27th, 2023.

5/5 stars
Thank you to the publisher for the early review copy via netgalley.

I really enjoyed this book. Katie's a very believable character that has obvious flaws and knows her flaws. She finds out her only real friend is dead and nobody is doing anything about it. Rather than leaving it with the police she throws herself into the investigation, or rather starts her own investigation.

I was kind of expecting tarot reading to be more important to the story, but I like how it was included. Katie originally gets involved via a tarot reading. Other than that she imagines people as different tarot cards and etc. There's not really a romance to the book, but there is a friendship that could potentially become one.

I do recommend this book

This was a good story, with a fairly good plot. The writing became repetative at times, which can drag you down.

The ending was pretty satisfying, if not a little rushed, so here too I enjoyed. I was fully satisfied the way this ended. There is closure in what happened to Marley.

A down-on-her-luck tarot reader stumbles into a complicated mystery and proceeds to make it twice as complicated! Katie True is (mostly) skilled at reading people, getting mental images of the tarot cards they relate to, which is an interesting addition to a mystery plot. It is definitely not a thriller, or especially realistic, but if you are willing to relax and join in the fun, it's a delightful escapade!
I really enjoyed this cozy mystery, and hope it becomes a series.

Katie True, tarot card reader extraordinaire, is down on her luck, working at a seedy tchotchke shop in a mall. She makes friends with a fascinating woman who works at a neighboring store: Marley. One day, a mysterious man comes into the shop for a tarot reading. Katie sneaks a peek at his phone and sees a photo of a deceased Marley. What happened to her? Katie is determined to find out, using her tarot cards to help her uncover Marley's fate.

This book caught my eye immediately--one of my favorite covers I've seen in a long time. This seemed more cozy mystery than thriller to me, but that suits me just fine. I love strong and flawed female characters, and Katie did not disappoint. The shining moments are the discussions of the tarot cards themselves and their meanings--Lina Chern clearly has done her research and put painstaking effort into folding tarot lore into the novel.

This is a great book for those who enjoy a medium-paced mystery and love who-dunnits. Unique and fun!

Play the Fool is the perfect read for a fire-side, cold winter’s night!

Chern writes a cozy mystery with an empowered female lead determined to solve her friend’s murder.

Katie works a mainstream job at a Russian tchotchke shop in the mall. However, her true talent lies within tarot reading. Unfortunately for Katie, clientele is scarce.

With little hope for improvement in her job that keeps the lights on, Katie relies on her friend Marley, who works at the shop across from her.

Stuck in-between the present and her hopes for the future, Katie lacks purpose. It certainly doesn’t help that her family are always giving her advice on what she should do, rather than appreciating what she brings to the table.

That’s where Marley comes in. Marley is the confidant Katie needs in her life. Marley wholeheartedly supports her friend’s dreams for tomorrow and accepts Katie for who is.

One night, while giving a tarot reading, Katie glimpses her client’s phone. What she sees will forever change her…

All it takes is one photograph of Marley, dead with a gunshot wound to the head for Katie’s life to spin out of control. Her friend is gone. Who killed her? What was Marley hiding? As Katie fights for answers to these questions, she might just end up becoming the murder’s next target.

Chern delivers a page-turning novel that will leave readers on the edge of their seat!

I read this novel in one day; it was impossible to put down! As I was reading, I became more and more enthralled with the plot; needing answers as much as I needed oxygen. Chern certainly knows how to deliver!

Chern’s characters were authentic, and I related to their plights. Having the skills to succeed but not knowing what path to follow is a struggle I think many readers relate to. People don’t always know where life is going to lead them next, nor do they always have everything put together. We are all flawed - but it is those imperfections that make us human. Chern highlights the importance of being your own person and believing in yourself, even when the odds are stacked against you.

Thank you to Random House Publishing Group, NetGalley, Lina Chern, and Kathleen Quinlan, for reaching out to me and providing me with an arc. Based on my previous reviews, you thought I might enjoy Play the Fool. You were absolutely right! I can not thank you enough for bringing this book to my attention.

Play the Fool follows Katie True, a semi-professional tarot card reader who works at a Russian tchotchke store at a dying mall. She doesn’t know what she wants to do with her life and feels like the failure in her family. She’s got nothing going for her, but she does have a friend, Marley, who works in another store. An odd man shows up at her store and she gives him a card reading, and sees a picture of her friend on his phone - and she’s dead. This sends her down a whirlwind of figuring out what happened to Marley and who killed her.

When I first saw this book, I thought it would be an interesting murder mystery. It turns out that there was a lot to it - involvement with the cops, some shady businesses, illegal dealings. It was pretty interesting, but the book lost me in the last 1/3 of it. I felt like it was twist after twist after twist, and I was getting pretty dizzy.

The book lost me in the end. It got to the point where I just wanted to finish it to figure out where it ended up, but when I learned how it ended I didn’t love it.

I also didn’t love some of the parts of the book that felt too unrealistic. When Katie gets wrapped up in this case, the cop who is supposed to be such an amazing detective ends up giving her intel and letting her almost be a part of the case (except they make it clear it’s not really a case, even though he’s spending most of his time on this). It just was all a bit too unrealistic and corny for me. And it might be an unpopular opinion, but I couldn’t stand Owen, Katie’s brother.

Overall, this was a solid 2/5 for me. I didn’t love it, but I didn’t hate it.

Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the eARC!

I really enjoyed the premise of the book and the writing style too. i really like the characters that are written and plot itself as well. Great book!!

This was so good!!! A really different kind of mystery. Very original. Great characters and the perfect ending makes this one of my new favorites.

This debut is fantastic.

The book tells the story of the chronically underemployed Katie 'True who discovers her best (and only) friend is missing. Both work at gift-type stores in the mall, but Katie also has a talent for fortune telling which leads her to discover proof her best friend may have been killed.

The book does have good twists and turns and a fun plot, but the real star of the book are the characters: Katie, Detective Jamie, and Katie's family.

This book kind of reminded me of the Spellman Files, which I also loved.

This book is awesome, and I look forward to more by the author.

Mystery and Tarot? What's not to love?

This is a great book in what I hope becomes a series. Katie True is a complex protagonist, and quirky and unique. The mystery was engaging and kept the tension going. I appreciated the deft hand she had in writing Katie's brother Owen. Writing a character on the Spectrum - it can come out too one - dimensional, or like a Rain man copy. But the author created a very real and interesting character. I also appreciated all the Chicago color in the book. And I am looking forward to seeing the friendship between Katie and Jamie develop.

I got an ARC of this book from NetGalley for an honest and independent review.

It's always important for an author not to show their entire hand. Sometimes, that applies to the things they choose not to put into a story as much as the things that they do. In the case of Play the Fool, author Lina Chern's restraint factors into the enjoyment of this debut novel almost as much as the clues she drops along the way.

I was pleasantly surprised at the role tarot plays in Play the Fool. I expected a gimmick, something like clues or messages hidden in cards. But Chern shows more restraint than that. Rather, Katie has a legitimate backstory with the cards, which makes thinking of people and things in terms of tarot cards second nature. (Familiarity with tarot will likely enrich the story, but I can attest it is fully enjoyable and accessible knowing absolutely babkas about them.) Chern also wisely shows a little subtlety in Katie's various family relationships, which, aside from Owen, are all dysfunctional in their own ways. There is no blowup behind that dysfunction, just expectations not meeting up with reality. Mundane stuff that doesn't cease to be painful or frustrating by how boring it is.

Making those things part of Katie's character rather than forcing them into more prominence into the plot means Chern can spend more time on the mystery. "A murder without a body is like a puzzle without a box," Jamie says, but this case is one where half the pieces are missing, too. No body, but also no motive, conflicting stories about her last day, and the progressive realization that Marley might not have been who she said she was—all of it complicates things for our detectives. It would be easy to say Katie's reckless and impulsive stabs at sleuthing on her own don't help, but the information she stumbles into (sometimes a bit conveniently) does help inch the case along. She makes many very bad decisions, but her heart is in the right place, and that same sense of caring means she has genuine relationships with others. It's as much a party of Katie as her self-identity of being a walking disaster, and you can't help but root for her a little.

In a more realistic novel, Katie would have gotten arrested and/or killed for her boneheaded moves. In a more gratuitous one, Katie would have singlehandedly solved the case through the cards and/or via an epiphany had in the throes of passionate sex with Jamie. Chern gives us neither, and the clever story she hands us instead feels genuine and as sweet as anything can be with murder and possibly organized crime. Nothing foolish about that.

From a strictly whodunnit standpoint, there are some big reveals here, but many of the twists were not earthshattering. I felt I could anticipate the importance of most things, though there were some nice red herrings thrown my way. I don't think this is a bad thing, though. Internet fandom has conditioned us to equate surprise with good writing when the inverse is often true. Foreshadowing means the author lays the groundwork for something before it happens. Genre comes with its own expectations, including, in the case of mystery, red herrings and, often, chases or peril near the end. Chern knows the tropes, and when to follow and subvert them. Play the Fool will not revolutionize the genre, but it is a solid mystery and a whole lot of fun.

(A longer version of this review will appear on RingReads on March 28, 2023, at 3:42 p.m. MDT)

Thanks to Netgalley and to Random House for this e-ARC.

I loved this book. I thought the plot was a good twist on a murder mystery and the main character was a great example of how sometimes you need to set your own expectations for life instead of waiting for other people to set them for you. Katie was a realistic lost soul and her relationship with her brother was particularly endearing.

Katie is working a dead end job with a good knack for reading people. When she finally makes a friend she starts to latch on to the relationship. When things take a turn, Katie works hard, defying both the local police and common sense, to solve the central mystery of the book. I loved that there was a flirtation, but not full on romance in this book. Instead the author chooses to focus on friendship and finding yourself in your late twenties. To me that really made the book a winner. I can't wait to see what Lina Chern does next and I hope Katie True has more novels to star in.

This was a very fast-paced, mystery with thriller thriller elements and a slight hint of mysticism. This story follows Katie True, an employee of a small tchotchke shop in a mall who reads tarot cards on the side, befriends an older mysterious women who works a few shops away whom she makes a connection with. After a random tarot card reading for a sketchy man, she sneaks a peak on his phone and sees a picture of her friend, murdered. We go on a quest with Katie to find out what happened to her friend and as she finds out more about herself. This was a fun, quick read that has you guessing what will happen next and also what kind of sticky situations Katie will find herself in!

Katie True lacks ambition. She tried to be a professional tarot card reader. That didn't work. She is floating through a series of entry-level jobs that lead nowhere. Life in the city was expensive so she moved back to the suburbs, closer to her parents. She takes a job in the mall selling knick-knacks. How can she find what is right for her? She is a self-taught tarot card reader with strong intuition and good powers of observation. Katie hopes her tarot cards will show her the path to be on. At work, across the mall is a girl, Marley, whom Katie has gotten to know. Marley is the only friend that Katie has. When Marley fails to show up for work, Katie becomes worried. Could Marley be abducted or is she dead? When Katie reports her missing, will the police believe her?

Katie felt like Marley was a good friend. She listened to Katie and offered her advice that made sense. The police aren't helping so Katie decides to take matters into her own hands. This decision could help locate Marley or cause problems. Will Marley be found?

This book is fun and unusual. Katie is like a leaf in the water, bobbing along with no purpose. She doesn't know what she wants to do, nothing seems to capture her imagination. When Marley goes missing, Katie comes to an understanding of what friendship is all about. How well do you need to know someone to consider them a friend? What are friends willing to do for each other? This charming story examines the elements of friendship, finding your purpose in life, and making peace with yourself.

Rounded up to 4. This was a fun, quirky murder mystery. It felt current but not trendy. A bit difficult to describe. Read quickly, a couple odd loose ends in my opinion, but still fun.

I really liked this book. It was entertaining and fun. Right from the first line I was hooked. I this might just be my Wednesday obsessed brain but I feel like the Mc had Addams family vibes. I was interested in where this story was going from the very beginning, and I can’t wait for more books by this author.

I ended up really liking this book! At the beginning Katie is really unlikable and it was most a bit cheesy, but then I was really drawn into the story and it kept me guessing! I never expected the twist at the end!

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the advanced copy of the book.