Member Review

Annie Adams is slowly learning how to live in the lavish mansion she inherited after solving her great aunt's murder, when a random run-in with local fortune teller Peony Lane sets off a series of events that will bring the past back to the forefront.

I can't figure out how to talk about the plot without giving away the revelations that kept me hooked, so I'll just say that Annie is a little more capable and survival savvy than the usual amateur sleuth, which made me like her from the get-go. You get to spend time with several characters as the plot jumps from one time to another to slowly reveal the many things that happened and the reasons why they did. It's a bit like a trifle, where you get different flavors as you dig down, but they all make a deliciously coherent whole.
I do wish the jumps between timelines were handled a little more clearly because I sometimes had to go back a few lines to register the fact that we'd jumped from one time to another. In part, it's because you sometimes get notifications of time and place, while others you just jump right into the plot. It's nothing major and I acknowledge that part of it is my tendency to speed read, but more clearly delineating it would make for a better read.
Other than that, I found the way Perrin weaves several mysteries into one big question to be super interesting. It's lies and hidden truths stacked on top of each other, and all it takes to bring it all down is Annie meeting one person and expressing curiosity. The way things were slowly revealed hooked me and had me turning pages long after I should have stopped.

Very happy thanks to NetGalley and Dutton for the page-turner read!