This story was a rollercoaster! A lot was going on with a lot of characters. Honestly it was fun but not my cup of tra

Lots of characters and lots going on in this book!

“Mojo” or magic was everywhere in the world - and like everything, it was for sale to the highest bidders and open to the most cunning thieves. Great concept that just needed more cohesion.

Thanks to Net Galley and publishers for the ebook in exchange for my honest review.

I'm not sure what to make of this book. It seemed to me to be a fantasy, sci-fi, mystery and paranormal thriller all in one package. We have a thief without a heart (literally) who can teleport through mirrors, a rebellious teenaged girl who becomes the channel for a mysterious online game that promises to remake the world and a host of other decidedly untraditional characters. Add to that mixture a dose of mojo and you have the recipe for dandy misadventures.
I had a bit of trouble getting into this one but the overall story was compelling enough to keep me reading. I was interested enough to want to find out how it ended. The author does wrap everything up at the end but some of it left me wanting to know more. I liked some of the characters and loathed others but I needed to know what happens to all of them.

This book has a lot going on. I had difficulty staying in the story, it was a bit over stuffed with characters, plots, twists, evil plans within evil plans for this reader. I really liked the magic mojo developed here, it was new and could have really been developed. Unfortunately it got muddled in the villains, plots, back stories and more. It felt like I was reading this forever.

The characters were not a likable group for me, the main character Sid was the least. It’s hard to read a book, for me when I can’t find anyone to cheer for. There were a few times that the characters spoke like whinny pre-teens, which was really off from how they were written through the book.
The ending was weird, the epilogue was weirder, it felt so rushed. It didn’t fit well with the whole story.
I enjoyed the possibilities in the magical world. I liked the world this author created. I didn’t enjoy the way it was written.

I really enjoyed this book. Usually if magic appears in the book’s blurb, I shy away from it unless it’s Neil Gaiman. I am not usually a big fan of magic but I decided to take a chance and I am glad that I did. . This book was a fun, fast paced and difficult to put down. I thought the source of the magic, mojo, was fun and inventive. There was lot going on surrounding magic that was creative. The main character, Sid, is flawed and selfish. Probably not the most likable but you root for him anyway. There is a mystery to be solved and connections abound and everything comes together in the end.

3.5

There is so much going on in this book that it's sometimes hard to keep track of it all. Besides the many goings on, there are also a lot of terms associated with the magic - or mojo as it's called - used that aren't explained very well, which can leave readers in the dark as to what it all means. The basic premise follows the main character, Sid Catchpenny, as he gets called on by an old friend to help track down a missing teenager. It quickly becomes clear that there is much more going on than a simple missing persons case, but it all gets rather convoluted at times. Sid jumps from event to event rather quickly and literally, as he is one of the few people in the world who is a sly - a person who can travel almost instantaneously from one place to another by jumping through mirrors. He's also one of those main characters that you're supposed to be sympathetic towards, but it's rather hard most of the time as he makes himself very unlikeable, much like every other character in this book. There isn't a single character I really enjoyed. They are mostly tolerable, with a few that I couldn't stand. When you don't enjoy the characters, it can make it a lot harder to get through a story, as you can't connect as well to what's going on. I do have to say though that most of the characters played their parts well and served their purpose in the story, even if I couldn't connect to them. Eventually I did come around to Sid as more of his story is explained, but even then, I didn't love him.

As the events continue, they get rather ridiculous, which is saying a lot for a book that involves jumping through mirrors and collecting mojo off beloved items. However, I did like the underlying message from the final event of the book, even if I didn't necessarily like everything leading up to it. The ending was ambiguous enough to believe that a sequel could be possible, though not necessary. I think I would have enjoyed this more had there been characters I could connect with more and parts of the magic system explained better. It is one of the most unique magic systems I've read about and one I did enjoy, but I wish we'd been given just a little more information on it. If there ends up being a sequel, I'll pick it up, as I do want to know if a few of the loose ends get taken care of.

I usually love urban fantasy books but I never found a rhythm reading Catchpenny. The story follows Sid Catchpenny as he tries to solve the mystery of a missing teenager, while putting together the events of his late wife's death. This 'mystery' novel is more of a self discovery novel. Sid is a very whiney man child who I could not stomach.

Thank you NetGalley and William Morrow for this eARC.

With the disclaimer that this is a mashup of a genre I love and a genre that I only occasionally sample, I found this book uneven. Slow to get rolling, its world building and magic-rules-establishing sections capable but not engrossing; once it gets into the noir rhythm, it's fun and compelling for the mid-sixty percent of the book. Then it fizzles for me; as a mystery, we're a step or three ahead of the hero, with one or two too many fake reveals kind of killing time and connections that feel more contrived than satisfying. And, in the effort to make the hero flawed, he became revealed as SUCH a loser that I ended up at a loss for a reason to root for him at all.

Catchpenny is a creative urban fantasy filled with twists and turns. Sid Catchpenny is a thief who can travel through mirrors to steal mojo. Sid is quite broken after the death of his wife and this plays a big part in the story. With a missing teenager, a doomsday cult and the fate of the world at stake, the story is both complex and engrossing.
The author has created a detailed world and there are an abundance of people and plots that all have to come together. Throughout the story, Sid and the reader are left trying to understand how everything comes together and are connected. I felt like the reveals were dragged out at times and I think I would have enjoyed the story more overall if I had understood more earlier on.
Charlie Huston has written a wonderful story and I really liked the magic that existed in this world which is both understandable and believable.

I received and advanced e copy of the book in exchange for my honest review.

I read Catchpenny because I enjoyed Charlie Huston’s work on Moon Knight. Huston writes living prose that is peppered with so much creativity. An enjoyable travel through thrill and possibility.

I love Huston’s earlier books and looked forward to this one. But the fantasy element did not hook me though I still loved Huston’s writing. Hope he goes back to crime and or vampire thrillers.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

DNF 30%- I had such high hopes for Catchpenny. This was one I was honestly looking forward to sitting down and being utterly entertained by because it had all the catnip I pretty much love in a fantastical book-snarky MC who is slightly damaged, some mystical/magical elements, and going through mirrors seems pretty cool all while trying to figure out where a missing girl went. What could go wrong?

Whelp, this one just isn't for me. I forced myself to get to 30% in order to give it a fair shot, but the way that the author thrust the reader into this world without a ton of explanation and you have to learn as you go along felt a little frustrating. The mojo concept was interesting, but not enough explanation was done around everything else (like seriously, what is a mannikin anyway?). Perhaps this is for a more patient reader than I am. I didn't find the way that Sidney's backstory was woven into the plot detracting like some reviews I read. I honestly thought that was done really well, but for me trying to figure out the world and all of the threads that the author was creating just left too much to figure out and understand.

Syd Catchpenny lives in a depressive state mourning the death of his wife and child. When a friend requires his unique services to locate a missing teenager, he agrees. He believes this will get him out of debt and hopefully move forward. Syd is a thief who has the ability to travel through mirrors using magic or mojo he acquires through energy coming off certain curiosities. There is a video game that tracks the wishes of a cult leader, evil people who grow their power to dominate society, manikins that are flawed mirror replicas of particular humans and the teenager around whom the mysterious events revolve.

The premise sounded great. I found the story too focused on
Syd as a whiney, selfish, self-absorbed child/man who allowed himself to be a pawn for the powers that be. Eventually he came into his own and the story became better for it. I found the uniqueness of harnessing power from people to try and control outcomes fascinating and the description of nothingness frightening. It was well written and well-crafted; but was not a book I wanted to get back to. I believe others will love the inventiveness.

Thank you NetGalley and William Morrow for this advance copy. All opinions are my own.

3.5 stars rounded up. The premise for this book is so interesting, and there were parts that were really fun to read, but it was not captivating for me. Maybe it's not my style of writing, and someone else will love the story. There were some great unexpected twists in the book that I enjoyed.

Catchpenny is many things. It’s a fantasy book with a magic system unlike most you have seen, based on emotions. Intensity and quantity of emotion creates magic. This quite plausible concept is used to explain real things, from community theatre to suicide cults, from rock concerts to dungeons and dragons games. Because Charlie Huston has thought a lot about the mechanics and the economics that would make people do things to create such magic and pull it to themselves. And he embeds into the narrative real life examples like the Altamont free concert in 1969 where people were stabbed to death. So the book sometimes almost feels like a documentary. But then there are other things like traveling through mirrors and creating duplicates of people from their energy, that give the story kind of house of mirrors feel, somewhat hallucinatory.

Secondly, Catchpenny is a very noir mystery. There are many twists and turns in the story of this abducted teenager, Circe. Catchpenny himself is both narrator and detective and keeps going around, either through mirrors or in the normal ways like walking, through this world where he keeps getting beaten up and threatened by the gangsters of this magic (called mojo), yet he perseveres because he feels that one, everything is connected and two, solving the mystery would get him out of the depression he has been living with. He is a deeply unreliable narrator whose most basic ideas about his own life turn out to be wrong. And yet he is quite canny and through his perspective we get why people do the things they do, how does it benefit them. He is tragic and ridiculous and complicated.

So will you like this book? I don’t know. But should you read this book? I would say you should. It’s quite an experience.

"A thief who can travel through mirrors, a video game that threatens to spill out of the virtual world, a doomsday cult on a collision course with destiny, and a missing teenager at the center of it all. With the world on the brink of every kind of apocalypse, humanity needs a hero. What it gets is Sid Catchpenny.

Sidney Catchpenny has had a bad run. Laid low by a years-long bout of debilitating depression, he's all but squandered his reputation as one of the most uniquely talented thieves in LA. There aren't many who can do what Sid does. He's a sly, a special kind of crook with the uncanny ability to move through mirrors. And the spoils he's after are equally unusual. Forget jewels and cold cash - Sid steals curiosities - items imbued with powerful mojo, a magical essence gleaned from the accumulated emotion that seeps into interesting, though often banal objects. That spot on the carpet where your old dog used to lay at your feet? The passed-down family heirloom nobody wants but everybody refuses to throw away? These curiosities are full of mojo, which is both the currency of the criminal underground and the secret source of magic in the world.

When a friend from Sid's past comes looking for his help with an important client, and the chance to pay off old debts presents itself, Sid seizes the opportunity...as best he can. But the case he stumbles into is more complicated than it seems, and it portends a seismic shift in the world, one that will leave no one untouched. As the fog of his depression begins to lift, Sid sees connections everywhere he looks, and the once disparate threads of the case - a missing teenage girl, an entire bedroom saturated with mojo, and Sid's own long-dead wife - begin to coalesce."

Mojo dojo catchpenny housebreaker? Sorry, I couldn't resist.

Thanks to Netgalley and Vintage for the eARC!

So first of all, this book was not for me. I didn't really have a great time reading it.
That being said, the writing is fantastic! The plot is kind of confusing but we're following a character who is constantly baffled so it makes total sense for the narrative.

I understand the importance of unlikable characters and wow, Did is a whiff of stagnancy but again, the book wouldn't make sense if he were really charming. I think lots of people are really going to live this one, though

Catchpenny is, from a technical perspective, a very good book. The prose is exquisite. It has a neat magic system. The way Huston juggles all the moving parts so they all come together in the end is satisfying. The mystery is laid out well. The individual concepts of mojo the magic system, using mirrors, manikins, etc. plus Gyre the game and other elements of the world are incredibly well thought out and executed.
The problem is, I can’t say I enjoyed reading it. There are individual sections of the book I really enjoyed, but for the most, I had to hype myself up to keep reading. I spent basically the entire time very confused. I was intrigued by the mystery, but it wasn’t enough on its own to motivate me to keep reading. So, I read the book in fits and bursts.
I think I was also put off by the fact that I dislike almost every character in the book. I wouldn’t survive a fifteen minute conversation with Sidney Catchpenny without wanting to punch him.
At the same time, I think a lot of the complaints I have about the book were the author’s intention. Catchpenny is confused the whole time, so the reader is too. Catchpenny being kind of an awful person is a major plot point of the book, so of course the reader dislikes him. I find it difficult to criticize a book for being what it was intended to be. My complaints can be easily summed up as “I don’t think this book is for me,” which isn’t necessarily an indicator of quality.
All in all, if you really like pulp fantasy mysteries with well-written prose and a complicated plot, you would really like this book. I just didn’t.

Addendum: I feel like there are some jokes in this book that haven’t aged well considering Sinéad O’Connor has died, presumably since this book was written.

I received an advanced copy (of the review sampler) for free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Thanks to NETGALLEY and Vintage Books / Penguin Random House for sending me this eARC!

I thought this was a really interesting twist on magic in the "real" world. Every time I thought I had everything pegged, Huston managed to throw another curveball at us - and I love it when an author keeps me guessing!

The vintage vibes and nostalgia for a different time certainly spoke to my Gen X heart. And the portrayal of depressive disorders in a less traditional/acyclic manner also really resonated with me.

All in all, a poignant look at the different ways people deal with loss and fear and the lengths we all go to to be the hero of our own stories.

This book was amazing. I had a really hard time putting it down. A previous reviewer described it as something more like a Jim Butcher style story, but I thought it was more like the Nightside series, set in our world. Sid is definitely an unlikable character you can’t help but like. Some other readers hated him, but I honestly felt really bad for him. He was real, he was the person we have inside of us, I think.
As far as the storyline, I loved it. It was wild and insane, and everything I wanted out of this book. It was quite a beautiful story if you read between the lines, which, I hope you do. And once you come to the end, you will realize That the major question in this story is, “What would you be willing to sacrifice?” For me, that answer is everything.

This book is a standalone, but it is set up to be a sequel. I hope it is. It absolutely gave me that same feeling that the Nightside books did. (And I’m still salty about that series ending.) This book absolutely filled that void.

Huge thanks to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor and NetGalley for sending me this ARC for review! All of my reviews are given honestly!